Windows 8

Discussion:

Windows 8

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r***@optonline.net

2016-07-29 07:34:09 UTC

Can someone tell me if there's a newsgroup for Windows 8 anymore? I can't seem
to find one. Alternatively, can someone tell me how to check and see if my
USB3.0 ports are properly configured and are actually working as 3.0? I have two
Western Digital external hard drives plugged in to what should be 3.0 ports on
my motherboard but transfer rates are dismal. Thanks.

Bruce Esquibel

2016-07-29 11:16:08 UTC

Permalink

Post by r***@optonline.net
Can someone tell me if there's a newsgroup for Windows 8 anymore? I can't seem
to find one. Alternatively, can someone tell me how to check and see if my
USB3.0 ports are properly configured and are actually working as 3.0? I have two
Western Digital external hard drives plugged in to what should be 3.0 ports on
my motherboard but transfer rates are dismal. Thanks.

There seems to be an active group (sort of) called...

alt.comp.os.windows-8

But you might want to explain "dismal". There are many external drives out
there that promise speeds that you'll never see. Generally anything north of
like 80MB/sec is acceptable. So if a 4.2GB iso of a dvd copies in around a
minute, you are in the right ballpark at least.

Plus USB is still serial, if you are copying from one external to another
external, it's going to be around twice as long as going from an internal to
an external.

Yes I know, there are 1,000,001 exceptions to everyones performance but my
numbers aren't that far off with average daily use.

-bruce
***@ripco.com

r***@optonline.net

2016-07-29 20:43:27 UTC

Permalink

Post by Bruce Esquibel

There seems to be an active group (sort of) called...
alt.comp.os.windows-8
But you might want to explain "dismal". There are many external drives out
there that promise speeds that you'll never see. Generally anything north of
like 80MB/sec is acceptable. So if a 4.2GB iso of a dvd copies in around a
minute, you are in the right ballpark at least.
Plus USB is still serial, if you are copying from one external to another
external, it's going to be around twice as long as going from an internal to
an external.
Yes I know, there are 1,000,001 exceptions to everyones performance but my
numbers aren't that far off with average daily use.
-bruce

Thanks. I'm ripping DVD's to .mp4 files and transferring them to the external
drives which I hook up to my TV so all my movies are on the drive instead of
having to use the disks and DVD player. All is working as planned except when I
go to transfer from my desktop to the external drives. When I go to move a file,
it starts off at around 400-500 MB/s for a moment, then drops all the way down
to around 40MB/s. The external drives are WD My Books 4Tb drives, and rated at
USB 3.0. The cables are rated at USB 3.0 and my desktop is only a year old,
custom built, and all the USB ports, both on the MB, which is where the external
drives are plugged in, and also a PCI card with four USB ports, are all rated at
USB 3.0. In fact, the MB has two ports rated at and ready for USB 3.1. So I
don't know why the transfer speed is so low. At least I think it's low.

Les Cargill

2016-07-29 21:07:33 UTC

Permalink

Post by r***@optonline.net

Post by Bruce Esquibel

There seems to be an active group (sort of) called...
alt.comp.os.windows-8
But you might want to explain "dismal". There are many external drives out
there that promise speeds that you'll never see. Generally anything north of
like 80MB/sec is acceptable. So if a 4.2GB iso of a dvd copies in around a
minute, you are in the right ballpark at least.
Plus USB is still serial, if you are copying from one external to another
external, it's going to be around twice as long as going from an internal to
an external.
Yes I know, there are 1,000,001 exceptions to everyones performance but my
numbers aren't that far off with average daily use.
-bruce

40 MB ain't bad at all for USB throughput, regardless of 1.0/2.0/3.0 . A
SATA drive will probably run faster.

I don't believe the 400-500; it's an artifact of instrumentation.

--
Les Cargill

r***@optonline.net

2016-07-29 21:16:39 UTC

Permalink

Post by Les Cargill

Post by r***@optonline.net

Post by Bruce Esquibel

There seems to be an active group (sort of) called...
alt.comp.os.windows-8
But you might want to explain "dismal". There are many external drives out
there that promise speeds that you'll never see. Generally anything north of
like 80MB/sec is acceptable. So if a 4.2GB iso of a dvd copies in around a
minute, you are in the right ballpark at least.
Plus USB is still serial, if you are copying from one external to another
external, it's going to be around twice as long as going from an internal to
an external.
Yes I know, there are 1,000,001 exceptions to everyones performance but my
numbers aren't that far off with average daily use.
-bruce

40 MB ain't bad at all for USB throughput, regardless of 1.0/2.0/3.0 . A
SATA drive will probably run faster.
I don't believe the 400-500; it's an artifact of instrumentation.

I don't know. When I start a transfer, the progress meter for Windows goes
flying towards the 40-45% mark on the transfer, ar around 400-500 MB/S then
drops all the way to that 40 or so. Maybe it is in fact a false reading. I just
wondered if there's a way to make sure all the USB ports are up to snuff and
running at the 3.0 as advertised. I've got abot half my movies transferred and
I'm still working on then. The Blu-ray disks are slowing me down. Takes a good
half hour to convert just 1 to .mp4. Oh well, I'm happily retired and have
nothing else to do.

Jim Wilkins

2016-07-29 21:58:14 UTC

Permalink

On Fri, 29 Jul 2016 11:16:08 +0000 (UTC), Bruce Esquibel

Post by Bruce Esquibel

There seems to be an active group (sort of) called...
alt.comp.os.windows-8
But you might want to explain "dismal". There are many external drives out
there that promise speeds that you'll never see. Generally anything north of
like 80MB/sec is acceptable. So if a 4.2GB iso of a dvd copies in around a
minute, you are in the right ballpark at least.
Plus USB is still serial, if you are copying from one external to another
external, it's going to be around twice as long as going from an internal to
an external.
Yes I know, there are 1,000,001 exceptions to everyones performance but my
numbers aren't that far off with average daily use.
-bruce

Run a read speed test on the drive with HDDScan or such. When I do the
speed steps down considerably as the head nears the inside tracks.
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html

Loading Image...

HDTune doesn't handle multi-Terabyte external drives well, and it may
change Power Option settings.

--jsw

Bruce Esquibel

2016-07-30 11:52:51 UTC

Permalink

Post by r***@optonline.net
Thanks. I'm ripping DVD's to .mp4 files and transferring them to the external
drives which I hook up to my TV so all my movies are on the drive instead of
having to use the disks and DVD player. All is working as planned except when I
go to transfer from my desktop to the external drives. When I go to move a file,
it starts off at around 400-500 MB/s for a moment, then drops all the way down
to around 40MB/s. The external drives are WD My Books 4Tb drives, and rated at
USB 3.0. The cables are rated at USB 3.0 and my desktop is only a year old,
custom built, and all the USB ports, both on the MB, which is where the external
drives are plugged in, and also a PCI card with four USB ports, are all rated at
USB 3.0. In fact, the MB has two ports rated at and ready for USB 3.1. So I
don't know why the transfer speed is so low. At least I think it's low.

Ha, after looking around WD's website for any specs for that series of
drives (there isn't any, really), from the couple of recent posts to the
public forum, if you think it's doing 40MB/sec, count your blessings and
assume it's as good as it gets.

One guy said it takes 2 hours to copy a 3GB folder, another was saying it
seems to be 10x slower than some other drive he used to use. The only hard
numbers I ran across was it (My Book) uses a "green drive", which I think
automatically classifies it as a 5400RPM and "up to 3GB/sec" which probably
refers to the bus speed and or max for the drive on reads.

I do have one suggestion, I think you said you have a pair of them,
depending on what else is on the USB ports, have you tried it with just one
of them plugged in?

Not to go over the whole story but several years ago there was a discussion
in one of the mac groups about a particular model that had usb ports on both
the front and rear of it and if they were all on the same bus or if there
were two different controllers. Some people claimed if there was one in the
rear, one in the front, they seemed to be faster than if both were in the
rear (or front) ports.

This was all usb 2 so I don't know if it applies to usb 3 but after screwing
around and using a 1GB file to copy back and forth from an internal, what I
discovered was if there was only one drive on the bus, you did get close to
the max speed of 480mb/sec for usb2 and as soon as you plugged in another
drive, the speed almost halved. Write speeds went down to around 220mb/sec
and adding a 3rd and 4th pretty much reduced it to under 100mb/sec.

So since it wouldn't take much time or skill to test, why not just
disconnect all the usb devices except one of those 4TB drives and try a copy
to it and see if the speed improves any from where you are now.

If it does, it just seems to be another case of the usb anomaly with
multiple drives and if it doesn't, it's probably just a matter of those
drives being "low performance".

Honestly, I don't have usb3 anything here to test theories. After some
frustrating experience with firewire drives I switched to using an NAS over
gigabit ethernet and haven't looked back. Next best thing over internal
drives in my book.

All my "tv boxes" can see and mount the NAS over ethernet and just seems
easier to manage and use than a bunch of drives being moved around.

-bruce
***@ripco.com