External HD usb 3.0 Transfer speed

I have a Toshiba 2TB Desktop USB 3.0 EXT HDD for backup ect And i bought and installed a StarTech 2 Port USB 3.0 PCIe Card (2 Ext). I am only getting 42.4 MB/s transfer speed when I try to move my music + video folders from my C drive. Seems to me that it should be getting much better speeds. Should I be getting faster transfer speeds? What can i do to fix this problem?

 

Yes. Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TCORt8b92U

"USB 3.0 has a theoretical max speed of 625MB/s, 10x faster than USB 2.0 with a theoretical max speed of just 60MB/s. The test file for this video is a 1.81GB video file."

 

so I see . Where can I start to figure out why?

 

Do you know approximately how much data (size in GB/MB) are you trying to transfer?

 

yes it was approx 500 gb took a little over an hour

 

Sorry but I'm really not sure. Perhaps someone with a bit more experience with USB 3.0 will respond. If both the external and PCI card are USB 3.0 compatible and you have the external plugged into the PCI card, then you should be getting much higher speeds IMO.

 

Can you post the exact model number of the external hard drive,post your windows version,are you transferring these files from your OS drive 'C:' if so is this drive completely full,does it have 10-20% free space?

Download and install and run this program,don't forget to uncheck the box if you don't want the toolbar.

http://majorgeeks.com/CrystalDiskMark_d5574.html

Click 'all' to start the benchmark and add the results to your next post.

 

Window 7 Home premium SP 1-----Toshiba PH3200U-1E3S USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive - 2TB, Up to 5Gbps, 5400 RPM, 32MB, Black and Silver Yes from the c (os) drive that has 42% free of 1 tb
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 102.340 MB/s
Sequential Write : 96.983 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 37.712 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 54.266 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.485 MB/s [ 118.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.610 MB/s [ 149.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.605 MB/s [ 147.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.649 MB/s [ 158.4 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 58.4% (536.0/918.3 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/04/25 9:03:55
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)


and the card model is StarTech PEXUSB3S2 2 Port PCI Express SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card Adapter - PCI, USB 3.0

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 128.156 MB/s
Sequential Write : 106.704 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 34.089 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 24.402 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.379 MB/s [ 92.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.556 MB/s [ 135.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.551 MB/s [ 134.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.574 MB/s [ 140.2 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [G: 15.8% (293.7/1863.0 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/04/25 9:23:58
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)


here is it run on the toshiba ext hdd

 

Your hard drive benchmarks are fine,in particular your sequential numbers show your bandwidth is higher than USB 2.0's 60mbps so your are definitely running in USB 3.0.

You will never get anywhere near the maximum transfer speed of USB 3,the bottleneck is the hard drive most probably the write speed,in particular the hard drive controller of external USB drives can be a bottleneck. Your speed is a little slow but not terribly slow for an external drive I'd say roughly in the middle but I can't find any numbers relating to your drive for a real world comparison,no reviews or info @ Toshiba.

Make sure your C: drive is defragmented every so often,don't have lots of files transferring simultaneously put them all in one folder and copy an paste the folder.

 

Thank You very much ricky and thisisu

 

Its no problemI have another little tip which you may find helpful, and is optional-

You may want to try enabling write cache also to speed up performance,this is best used if the drive is only connected periodically for large transfers or left permanently connected,its not recommended if you regularly connect and disconnect the drive multiple times per day.

Control panel,system,Device manager,right click drive,properties,optimise for performance.

Here's a little pictoral.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/speed-up-external-usb-hard-drives-in-windows-vista/