Avg. Write Speed on Ultra Metal Passport

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

I have a WD My Passport Ultra Metal edition.

I’m currently getting 30 MB/s transfer speed when transferring files from my PC to the external hard drive.

This doesn’t seem to be the ideal speed… is there something wrong or is this the speed I should suggest?

2

my testing system is Intel i7 with onboard USB 3.0 connectors (ASUS All-in-One ET2702IGTH) , speed of Passport Ultra Metal is above100 Megabyte/s. Attached the CrystalDiskMark screenshot:

417×380 31.6 KB

Please note that the benchmark results can vary depending on the system you used for the test.

3

benchmark tests tell me that my speed is also above 100 MB/s but that’s not the actual speed that I get when i’m transferring 1-2 GB .mkv files for example

4

Maybe the MKV is stored highly fragmented on the original drive, maybe you should update the USB 3.0 Host adapter driver to the latest version - there are tons of possibilities why a data transfer on an individual machine can not be compared with others. It’s nearly impossible to give a correct answer to this type of question as USB performance is bound to a lot of things.

5

I just realized I’ve been using the usb 2.0 ports

6

:joy: no comment :sunglasses:

7

ok so i hooked it up to a 3.0 usb port, and it started out at about 100 MB/s but then slowed down to 30 MB/s

any ideas why?

8

Buffer issues on the USB host controller could cause this, I see same behaviour on my old private laptop (Dell Precision M6400 with 1st Generation NEC USB Host controller). Same drive attached to the ASUS and even copying 12 GB MKV-files stay above 100 MB/s.

I have no idea how to solve this, maybe you can try a driver update of the shown USB host controllers within Windows Device Manager - but I am not sure if this may help.

9

Guess I can try that. And call wd while I’m at it

10

which usb host controllers in device manager are specific for the usb 3.0?

11

Example of my system:

I would try to update the Intel(R) 8 Series controller, Intel(R) USB 3.0 Root Hub and Intel(R) USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller, other USB 3.0 related devices are the Intel (R) USB 3.0 Root Hub and at the end the normal USB Root Hub.
All “USB Composite Device” and “USB Mass Storage Device” are attached devices not needed to be updated.

Your screen may vary if you have a different USB controller like a Renesas for expamle.

809×715 88.7 KB

12

i have 4 usb 3.0 ports, but my device manager looks like this:

http://s24.postimg.org/5fxi9rsk5/media.png

13

So you have two USB controllers, the two “Intel(R)7 Series…”

Try to update the drivers for "USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller and the three USB Root Hubs at the end of your list.

14

the usb 3.0 extensible is up to date from august of 2015. the root hub xHCI is also up to date from september of 2015.

the other two root hubs are from 2006 and windows says they are up to date…

15

ok so everything is fine lately, speeds are about 100 MB/s

however, this is only on my desktop PC

my other laptop is a DELL XPS 15 L521X, and it has 3 USB 3.0 ports, but all of them transfer at about 10-12 MB/s

help?

16

My private laptop is Dell Precision M6500 and here I had to enable the USB 3.0 support in the Dell BIOS, no joke!
Could be the same with your XPS. Please would you check BIOS settings - it’s just an idea.

17

Where in the bios would it be?

I found that if the wd passport is the only thing plugged into one of the three USB ports, then I get about 60-70 MB/s.

However if I plug my mouse dongle into the second port and my cooling pad into the third the. I get about 15 MB/s.

18

Thanks for reply, this seems to be a power issue then - not enough power on the USB ports to support the 900 Milliampere for USB 3.0 but only 500 Milliampere for the UBS 2.0 mode.

19

What causes that then and how do I remedy the situation?

20

Have you (re)installed the “Intel USB3.0 xHCI Driver” which are available within the Dell-Support-Sites under “Chipset”? This often helps to speed up the USB ports.

There might be different drivers available for download, depending on your configuration. But this can help. I did it prior of this posting too and even for my laptop I got updated drivers with better performance now.