Windows 7 + USB Transfer Rate

[mcclunyboy]

Hi,

I think this is a pretty prevalent problem but has anyone found out what causes the USB transfer rates to be so slow and if there is a fix?

I generally end up transferring data via usb at less than 10mb/s

 

[Minkey]

I generally end up transferring data via usb at less than 10mb/s

That's about right if you mean 10Mb/s (certainly for USB v1), USB v2 claims up to 480Mb/s but in reality you'll rarely match that. There a a few factors involved that specify the actual transfer rates (hardware, BUS etc.). If you want higher transfer rates look at Firewire.

 

[mcclunyboy]

It is USB v2.

Transferring to a flash drive is bas - that is down to the to flash drive though.

However even transferring files to an external HDD i expect it to be faster - at best I get about 75m/s. When transferring 100's of GB it gets frustrating.

I think 1 problem is my card reade - i am going to try disabling it tonight and using a different port

 

[AJordan]

Other types of "overhead" come into play with data transfer speeds including things like hard drive speeds. However I want to clarify something, are you talking about Mb/s or MB/s???

 

[mcclunyboy]

whats difference?! hopefully not pedantic

 

[AJordan]

Sorry I should have added more detail. Typically with transfer speeds things are measured in bits and not bytes. However, the average user only knows about bytes. For example the average mp3 is around 10 Megabytes in size. However transfer speeds are typically measured in Megabits per second. The conversion is this 1 megabit = .125 megabytes.

So when usb 2.0 "claims" to go 480 mbps (mega bits per second), that really equates to only 60 megabytes/s. Again 480 mbps is claimed in probalby not really going to happen on the avergae system, so your safest bet would be 240 mbps. Which means you should be transferring data at roughly 30 megabytes/second or 20 megabytes more than you currently are.

But remember there are hardware and other things that come into play. So if you have usb 2.0 then your speeds of are indeed slow, but you would not attain speeds of 75 Mb/s. If you understood that, congrats. If not feel free to ask more questions