USB 2.0 back to 1.0 !?

Hi, I recently tried to copy a 400 Megs folder on a usb stick for backup purposes, I couldn't believe my eyes when I realized the copy/paste process had been running for several hours when I got back home. I stopped everything and tried again... same sloppiness.

I'm on XPSP2 fully patched, and this problem appeared only recently.

The funny thing is that when I switched the usb stick and replaced it with a usb-external HD, the copy/paste went smoothly.

I tried to reproduce the process on a W2KSP4 partition, but this time the process went fast and smooth [so at least it's not some hardware problem]. Same computer, same stick, different results.

Strange. Is it possible some 2006 M$ patch for XPSP2 caused this?

Has anyone experienced this kind of problem?

Thanks

 

Hey dylanfan, I think the problem is with your USB flash drive. They are notorious for advertising "USB 2.0" and such when, in fact, they are not. Transcend is guilty of this with many of their thumb drives. There is wiggle room with the standards and specifications. You can Google the "Full Speed" versus "Hi Speed" controversy, also read the Wikipedia article on USB and pay particular attention to the part about SPEED. It's pretty well done. The external hard drives no longer face this issue, but the flash drives can be tricky. Even Sandisk speeds are usually pretty poor in comparison to high quality flash memory from companies like Corsair, Patriot and OCZ. A good place for comparison is Newegg.com as they stock almost everything complete with tons of user reviews. Here's the direct link to their USB Flash Drive section. If you go there, you'll read all about speed complaints in the user comments with lesser quality flash drives. Unfortunately, they are the the ones you usually see on the retail shelves. PNY flash is particularly slow and often singled out for lack of performance and quality. Bottom line with your issue: the problem lies with your flash drive and is probably lucky to get 7MB/S, that's why it was copying the entire time you were gone.

 

Hello,
7MB/s means 400MB take only about a minute to copy. He says it's been going on for hours. So the problem sounds more than cheap drive.
Mrk

 

dylanman, When I wrote I forgot you said literally hours. By chance, are you trying to copy a 400MB folder of smallish files? With flash drives large files transfer much faster than small files. Some recommend zipping small files into a large zip file and watch the transfer rate blaze w/ flash. Also, and now that I think about it, this could be your problem.... check the formatting of the flash drive. Many come out of the box formatted FAT. Not FAT32 or even FAT16 and you can run into the maximum files in the root folder of 255 entries. It would just stop transferring and you would think they are just transferring slow. Check that. You can format them FAT32 with no problem.

 

I'm curious, dylanfan, if you figured out your problem. After giving it more thought, I feel certain you have run up against the file number limit of a FAT formatted flash drive. Reformatting to FAT32 should solve your problem. With sub-directories, even with FAT16 you will have no problem. My guess is the 400MB folder had many small files. Let us know!

 

HIi again

It's true the folder contained many files, so it definitely might be related.

Format is (and already was) fat32, so the explanantion doens't lie there.

I also don't know why NTFS W2KSP4 is faster than NTFS XPSP2 to copy the file on the usb stick. Just doesn't make any sense at first glance.

I also noticed that deleting this folder from the usb stick takes quite some time too, although not nearly as much as writing on it.

Cheers