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Author Topic: Average transfer rates via USB to portables  (Read 1946 times)

skaterbyte

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Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« on: January 26, 2005, 07:22:48 pm »

Hi all.  I'm perusing and can find nothing to explain what I feel to be extremely slow transfer rates to my portable mp3 player (RCA Lyra RD1080B).  iI'll start a transfer and see 2.0MB/s rates to begin with, but shortly into the transfer the speed drops to .11MB/s - or just 960Kb/s.  Even if the Lyra is standard USB, I would expect to see closer to the 1.5MB/s or 12Mb/s rates - minus overhead.  In an attempt to get faster transfer rates, I try an SD card inserted into a USB 2.0 reader (element of Epson Printer) and try again, but that one is dropping to .04MB/s!  This is not a new problem for me, just took me a long time to post.   Any help would be great.  Oh, and i'm not interested in upgrading to MC11 just yet, so please don't suggest ;) Thanks much!

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Alex B

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #1 on: January 26, 2005, 07:54:27 pm »

I don't have an answer, but you may have a USB configuration or driver problem. Have you updated the motherboard chipset drivers?

I get a steady 1 Mbyte/s with my SanDisk USB1 card reader. My Epson USB2 printer can read the rather slow memory cards a bit faster, about 2 Mbytes/s. My Maxtor USB2 hard drive can read and write about 30 Mbytes/s.
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KingSparta

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #2 on: January 27, 2005, 07:32:18 am »

Maybe if you contact the makers of RCA Lyra RD1080B, you can find out the typical transfer rate you should get.
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skaterbyte

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2005, 08:50:17 am »

Thanks Alex B and KingSparta,

The USB drivers are updated to the latest (via 4 in one) and I can't find specs on the actual USB speed for the Lyra (seems they purposely avoid stating it).  I had requested the USB transfer info from RCA/Thompson a few days ago, nothing back yet.  I'll post their reply when I get it.

Alex B, you reference an external USB 2 drive, something worth trying.  I have an IBM drive to test this with and maybe can isolate the problem between "Windows" drivers or MC10.  More info to follow - thanks for the lead.   
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JimH

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #4 on: January 28, 2005, 08:59:47 am »

Are you converting from one format to another as you upload?
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SteveG

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #5 on: January 28, 2005, 02:30:23 pm »

skaterbyte,

Does your Lyra appear to your PC as a drive? I assume not. If that is the case, check the transfer rate when using Windows Media Player. It should be comparable to what MC is doing.

Steve
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IanG

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #6 on: January 28, 2005, 06:07:08 pm »

In an attempt to get faster transfer rates, I try an SD card inserted into a USB 2.0 reader (element of Epson Printer) and try again, but that one is dropping to .04MB/s! 

I've just tried dragging and dropping, and synching to an SD card in an Epson R300 - both gave me 0.5 Mb/s! That's 10 times faster than yours, but only a quarter the speed of Alex B!  If you find out what's going on, please let me know!  FWIW, I tried synching to a flash drive, too - it was only slightly faster.

Ian G.
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SteveG

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #7 on: January 29, 2005, 05:49:53 pm »

Transfer rates to anything that appears to your PC as a removable or fixed drive should be comparable(but slower) than what you see transfering data directly to  the device in Windows Explorer.  Try comparing the transfer of the same amount of data from Explorer and see how they compare.

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IanG

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #8 on: January 30, 2005, 11:06:13 am »

Try comparing the transfer of the same amount of data from Explorer and see how they compare.


As predicted, just a little slower.  I'd still like to know why Alex B's system is so much faster, though!

Ian G.
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Alex B

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2005, 12:30:47 pm »

Ian,

My printer is the same R300. I have SanDisk Ultra Compact Flash cards. Ultra was the speedy pro version two or three years ago, but now they are relatively slow. SanDisk claims that their latest generation Extreme Compact Flash card can write 9 MB/s and read 10 MB/s. I have used the cards only with Windows Explorer.

It is possible that the smaller SD Card is also slower.

One possibility is that your computer uses USB1 for some reason. I just checked the speed with an older USB1 PC + USB1 Compact Flash card reader and it was 800 kB/s.
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IanG

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #10 on: January 30, 2005, 04:38:49 pm »


One possibility is that your computer uses USB1 for some reason. I just checked the speed with an older USB1 PC + USB1 Compact Flash card reader and it was 800 kB/s.

Alex

Thanks for the input!  I'm using USB2, but the card is old. Maybe it's just a case of the card technology getting better? 

Cheers

Ian G.
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JimH

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #11 on: January 30, 2005, 04:48:34 pm »

Ian,
Try a google search on this.  It may be that the card is 2.0 but the drivers on the PC don't support 2.0.  I have one PC that complains about something similar whenever I plug in a USB flash memory device, but I've never bothered to try to fix it because I use it infrequently.
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IanG

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Re: Average transfer rates via USB to portables
« Reply #12 on: January 31, 2005, 03:03:57 am »

Jim

Thanks for that!  The PC's fine with USB2 - I tried some more experiments, reading from the card rather than writing, and it was much quicker.  To be honest, I'm not too bothered about how quickly I can read / write a SD card, it was just the possibility that there was a more systemic problem with my PC.  It looks like that's not the case!

Cheers

Ian G.
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