External HD is unbearably slow
 

I just recently replaced my lacie 250gb firewire hard drive with a Cavalry 500 gb USB 2.0 hard drive. My hard drive is used solely for music. My lacie started to slow down once I reached its max capacity but now with my new cavalry hard drive importing music to itunes is incredibly slower than it was with my lacie and I have 250 gb more of free space. Even listening to my music through my new hard drive is ridiculous since it can't go through a single song with out lagging several times. I have it formatted in FAT32. Is there something I can do to speed things up? I have 1 gig of RAM on my ibook and I don't think memory is a problem. Is USB 2.0 really that much slower than firewire? Anything to get things sped up would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

The problem isn't the size of the drive but the size of the pipe. USB 2.0 is like a 56.6K modem and Firewire 400 is DSL. Firewire 800 is a T1 and I suppose eSATA is supposed to be fiber optic or something.

That's why digital picture cameras use USB while movie cameras have to use Firewire.

Here are some real world stats on USB versus Firewire:

http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html

That's a useful link, majordude, and it supports what most of us know: in this area, Windows machines out-perform Macs. Others on the forum have claimed that this is due to sloppy work on the part of vendors and that the Mac meets the official USB 2.0 standards, and for all I know, this is true, but the fact of the matter is that USB 2.0 on a Mac is not very good, and those charts substantiate this (as well as pointing out the marked difference between Windows and Mac in this respect). You really WOULD do better to use FireWire if you have that option.

Joe VanZandt

would a usb to firewire connection speed things up at all?

Thanks! That info is really helpful. I would rather toss my new hard drive away and buy a new, bigger LaCie Firewire drive than have to endure the unbelievably slow speeds of this new USB 2.0 drive. Lesson learned.

USB hard drive --> hopeless!
 

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I too made the mistake of purchasing a USB 2.0 external hard drive for one of our computers. We intended to use it for iPhoto and iTunes libraries.

It was so hopelessly slow that it is now rarely used for anything more than backup -- we don’t care how long that takes as long as it’s done before we get up in the morning. ;)

I've heard bad things about the LaCie drives (look around this and other forums). I have a WD 500GB Firewire 800 drive I got from Buy.com for $235 or so not too long ago. Now it is less:

http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digi...202712831.html

USB 2.0 ought to be fast enough. You didn't tell us what Mac you have. I bet you have an older Mac with a USB 1.1 port.

Another possiblity is that you have it plugged into a USB 1.1 hub--for example the USB ports in the keyboard are a USB 1.1 hub.

So, macdizzle, please tell us

1. Exactly what Mac you have--model, clock speed, and any other things about it that will help us identify it, and

2. Exactly where you have it plugged in.

Trevor

We used it against a black MacBook that we bought in July, a 2002 PowerBook, and a turquoise G3. Granted, the latter two are older models, but even ther first one was reeeaally struggling.

The black MacBook should be OK. The other two would be expected to be unbearably slow. On the MaBook, you should have plugged the drive directly into the Mac's USB port. If it didn't work very well, the drive is probably bad. You should have seen normal hard drive speeds on the MacBook.

Chris

eSata interface for the Mac?
 

Perhaps I am being unfair, being otherwise used to FireWire 800 speeds?

By the way, most of the other external disks that I have are equipped with quad interface: FW 400 and 800, USB 2.0, and eSata.

Anyone have any idea when eSata interfaces are coming to the Mac? Or know what the speed advantage would be compared to FW or USB, given sufficient Bus/Cache?

They are here today if you buy an eSATA PCIe or PCI card for your PowerMac or Mac Pro, or ExpressCard/34 card for your MacBook Pro.
http://firmtek.com/
http://wiebetech.com/home.php
http://www.caldigit.com/index.asp

As a built-in feature, no, nobody outside of Apple knows, and if they do they are under NDA.

As far as speeds, for single drives eSATA will have a small advantage over FireWire 800 because of the lack of a bridge board. (Bridge boards convert from FireWire to ATA, which is the type of drives typically used in FireWire cases. An eSATA case to a SATA drive doesn't require a bridge board, so will have a small speed advantage.) However, the FW 800 interface is still faster than current single drives (for the moment), so other than the bridge board issue, the top speed is about the same.

Trevor

I'll have to correct you here with my real world experience.

Here is my setup:
mac mini
WD firewire external 500GB
WD usb-2 external 500GB

The firewire drive is only marginally faster than the usb-2. Really nothing special. It would be much faster on firewire-800 but the mac mini only does firewire-400.

Thanks for clarifying the eSata issue for me. :)

I think it's mostly a matter of economics. Everyone has usb on their computer. Only macs and high-end PCs have firewire.

Even the new ipods use usb-2 instead of firewire.

An Intel Mac Mini, or a G4 Mac Mini?

If you are using different drives, then this doesn't mean a lot. You would need to insure that the two internal drives are the same model and firmware. Otherwise, you may just have a faster drive in the USB 2.0 case. The fact that they are both Western Digital 500 GB drives is of little significance if they are not the same model and firmware.

If this is an Intel Mac Mini, then the throughput of USB 2.0 is much better than if this is a G4 Mac Mini. However, there's still a significant delta when you normalize the test with the same drive. Can you give us exact speeds that you've measured, so we can get a sense of what you mean by 'marginally faster'?

I have an ibook G4 running at 1.33 GHz, 768 MB DDR SDRAM, and I have plugged my hard drive into both USB sockets on the side of the computer and they both act slower than molasses when using it with itunes.

Good point. Mine is an Intel.

I don't remember the exact numbers but the difference in speed between usb-2 and firewire was probably something like 10-20%. I have heard that firewire is better at multi-tasking and uses less cpu resources. But in the real world I just want my files to copy as quick as possible.

Also I can watch ripped DVD movies on the external usb-2 drive without any hiccups. So it's definitely fast enough for music too.

It might be a power problem.. Does the USB h/d plug into a powercord? You might need to get a powered USB hub and make sure you plug into powered plugs. Not all Powered hubs are the same.. My belkin has 1 powered plug out of 4.. I use it to charge my Blackberry pearl, because plugging into my ibook g4 directly will not work..

There are two iBook G4/ 1.33 GHz models--the 12" and the 14". Both of them support USB 2.0 in the ports at the side of the computer.

With the USB hard drive plugged in to this iBook, open up System Profiler (it's in /Applications/Utilities) > Hardware > USB. Then, please copy/paste everything it says about the external USB drive to the forum for us to see.

There are several other possibilities for why this is so slow--it could be that you are using a USB 1.1 cable, or the drive case is actually USB 1.1 (even if it is advertised as USB 2.0).

Remember, a FireWire drive will be much faster for you.

Trevor

Here is the info on the hard drive:

USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge:

Capacity: 465.76 GB
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Version: 1.00
Bus Power (mA): 500
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: JMicron
OS9 Drivers: No
Product ID: 0x2339
Serial Number: 152D203380B6
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Vendor ID: 0x152d
Volumes:

Capacity: 465.76 GB
Available: 225.14 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: MS-DOS FAT32
BSD Name: disk1s1
Mount Point: /Volumes/CAVALRY

That's usb-2 speed. So if you have a usb-2 cable, hub and computer port you should easily be able to listen to music and even watch DVD movies in realtime from that drive.