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Very slow USB copy speeds to external HD

B

badlydrawnboy

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 20, 2003
1,531
418
I have an 8GB USB thumb drive. When I copy files to/from it to my Mac Pro (Early 2008 2.8Ghz), the transfer speeds are very slow. But when I use it with my 2009 Macbook, the speeds are fast.

Why would it work faster with a low end Macbook than with a Mac Pro? I'm using one of the USB ports on the front of the Mac Pro. I have fairly fast 750 GB and 1 TB drives in there.
 
Hello,

What's the format of your thumb drive, and what are the versions of the OS on each Mac?

Loa
 
I'm not sure what the format is. How would I check? It's a Kingston 8 GB Data Traveler.

Both of my Macs are running 10.6.4.
 
Hello,

With both Macs using the same OS, the format won't make any difference.

If you want to see which drive format it is, launch Disk Utility, from the Utilities folder in the main Applications folder.

It looks like your Mac Pro is connecting to your drive with a USB 1 protocol for some reason. Have you tried other USB ports on the Mac Pro?

Also, can you connect any other USB drive (external hard drive or another thumb drive) to the Mac Pro?

Loa
 
That's strange. I plugged the drive into my USB 2.0 hub, and it copied very quickly. I think you're right. For some reason it's using USB 1 when I plug it into the front of the computer.

But here's the really weird thing: the USB 2.0 hub is itself plugged into the front of the computer! That means one of two things: either there's only one USB 2.0 port on the front, or there's something about the drive that makes it behave as a USB 1 device when plugged into the front port (this doesn't make sense to me).
 
Hello,

It IS strange, but it's also beyond me to explain why! At least you found an easy solution!

Loa
 
I have a printer/scanner that showed up as USB 1.1 and gave me the endless beachball when I try and scan anything with it when it was connected with the short USB lead my USB 2.0 hub came with and then connected to my USB 2.0 hub.

Directly using the same lead the hub was connected to my mac with, it works perfectly and shows up as USB 2.0 in system profiler as it should and using the USB lead my hub came with, my hub is full USB 2.0 speed?

USB is just plain fickle I think :D

(or it was the lead from something else, and I was using a USB 1.1 lead for a USB 2.0 purpose. I think that was more likely)
 
Yes USB 1.0 would be going ALOT slower and speeds would only be in the 15MBit/sec range rather in the 200MBit/sec range.
 
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