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[RhinoBanga]

Hi Folks,

My 80GB iPod is syncing/transferring at 2MB a second on a USB2 connection.   Is this normal?   If not I guess there must be something wrong with my lappy

[sixrivers]

2 MB is a blessing.  My 60 gig transfers at 0.5 to 1.0 [max].  Also using USB2.  Would love to find a way to speed this up.

[RhinoBanga]

Are you using a laptop or a desktop?   Also does your mobo come with an Intel USB chip?   I remember reading somewhere that on intel mobo's the USB hubs are reported as normal speed but internally they are handled as enhanced USB (USB2) hubs and that causes problems.   You can tell by going into device manager and expanding the "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" branch.

[RhinoBanga]

Hmmm ... just found this:

http://www.robservatory.com/archives/2005/11/14/a-tale-of-three-hardware-interfaces/


Looks like it could be the HDD which is the limiting factor.

[sixrivers]

Good post.  I am using a desktop with a PCI / USB2 card.  I just started using this computer.  My last one was a 2003 vintage HP tower which had the same speeds.  That would seem to validate that the ipod hard drive is the limiting factor.

I would be interesting in knowing if anyone with a 60 / 80 gig ipod is getting speeds routinely faster than 2 mb/sec.

[lalittle]

I would be interesting in knowing if anyone with a 60 / 80 gig ipod is getting speeds routinely faster than 2 mb/sec.

I have a 60GB iPod Video (5G) and get faster speeds than 2mb/sec.  My speeds, depending on the sizes of the files being transferred, generally AVERAGE from about 2.6mb/sec up to about 4.7mb/sec.  I just did a sync and the speed seemed to be higher when transferring a lot of smaller music files, and slower when transferring my larger Audible files.  This seems counterintuitive, but when the music was trasferring, the speeds averaged around 4.7.  With the Audible files, the average dropped to around 2.6 to 3mb/sec.

In the sync I just did, the highest speed I saw was 5.2mb/sec, and the lowest was 0.9mb/sec.  The 0.9, however, was very brief and only once.  I saw a lot of speeds up around 4.8 to 5.0mb/sec, so the 0.9 was most likely a dip due to the system doing something.  I DID have my virus scanner on, and this is on a Dual Pentium 3 1Gig, so it's a rather slow system.

Larry

[sixrivers]

Wow.  What a couple of days it has been.  I have trying to re-sync about 40 GB of data on my ipod.  It starts off at around 2-3 mb/sec.  But it progressively slows down.  It has been going for about 24 hours now and only 20 GB has transfered.  Got home from work and found it crawling at 0.1 mb/sec...19 more hours to go...

I stopped the sync and then started it again.  I am now back up to a blistering 2 mb/sec...says I should be done in 3 hours.  If my experiences stay the same, it will start to slow down again.  I'd love to know what is causing this.

[Jakester]

I average under 1 mb/sec with my 60GB iPod, but since I'm converting from .ape to .mp3 during the process that is the limiting factor anyway.

And now I have an iPod response problem, and I'm sure the MC guys will say to upgrade to the latest MC and resync.  Looks like another 40 hours or so of sync time is in my near future as the first step in debugging.

As you point out sixrivers, it seems to help to break this into multiple 12-hour or so sessions otherwise things start creeping along even slower.

[cmhaughey]

I’m seeing the same, appalling performance when syncing my 80gb iPod with Media Center.

For grins, I installed iTunes to compare.  iTunes will sync roughly 1.5 gb in little more than one minute.  I’m still waiting on the same amount of data to sync via Media Center after 35 minutes.  This is unacceptable.

So, given the same PC and the same iPod, I have to conclude that the transfer rate is software specific.  That leaves one of two possibilities: 1) Media Center has an ENORMOUS defect, or 2) Some proprietary Apple mischief is allowing faster iTunes transfer (or preventing a speedy Media Center transfer…).

[lalittle]

For the people seeing the slow sync speeds, what firmware is on your iPods?

Thanks,

Larry

[Jakester]

V1.1.2

[lalittle]

V1.1.2

Interesting.  I had 1.1.1 firmware and it worked fine, then I switched to 1.2 and it also works fine.  I never tried 1.1.2, so perhaps it's something to do with the firmware after all.  Maybe you should try switching to the 1.2 firmware and see if this solves the problem for you.

Note that I didn't want to have iTunes installed on any of my systems, so I took my 60GB iPod to an Apple store and had them update the firmware for me (it's free and it only takes a few minutes.)  After this, I re-initialized the iPod in MC and re-syched, which took about 3 to 4 hours for a little over 40 Gigs, and showed an average transfer speed between 3 and 4 megs per second.

Larry