Super slow 4MB/s FW800 transfer with Vista Ultimate

S

smeg36

macrumors regular
I have a 2010 13" MacBook Pro. I bought a FW800 enclosure for my 500GB Seagate 5400rpm HD. In OSX using Path Finder to test transfer speeds I get around 40MB/s. Pretty good. Not as fast as it should be given the drive and FW800's possible speeds, but acceptable. When I switch over to my boot camp partition with Vista Ultimate installed I get 4MB/s. I can't figure out why I'm getting such slower speeds with Vista. I did the tests using the exact same files. So what am I missing? How can I get the transfer speeds I should be getting in Vista?
 
Last edited:
smeg36 said:
Yep, everything is up to date with all the newest updates applied.
Click to expand...

I had to check. ;)

I'm afraid it's probably something with the FW drivers. I don't have any FW drives here or Vista to check performance myself.

B
 
Microsoft changed the firewire driver stack for Vista and Windows 7.

In simple terms, it's now rubbish and just doesn't work as it should with most firewire devices.

One fix to reclaim SOME of the speed is the change your firewire controller driver to the Compatible Driver/Legacy Driver in device manager, a quick google for "Windows 7 firewire slow" will explain if more info is needed.

It's not a complete fix as the driver is capped at 40mb a sec, which imo still sucks. But it is better than you're currently experiencing.
 
I did the Google search you recommended, and found the directions to roll back the driver to the legacy drivers. When I follow them I only have two drivers to pick from, neither of which are the legacy drivers, and both of which only give me 4MB/s over FireWire 800. The issue is definitely the drivers though, using USB on the same drive gets me 27MB/s, the same speed I get in OSX.
 
If it's not listed as legacy, it may be labelled as "old version". use that.

Also, forgot to add, go to Device manager > Disk Drives> Your FW drive> policy > optimize for performance.

Last part makes a pretty big difference.
 
Thanks for the help. When I go to Device Manager I select the IEEE 1394 Bus Host controllers, then in the drop down I have AGERE OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Compliant Host Controller. I right click on that, and choose Update Driver Software. I then choose Browse my computer for driver software, then let me pick from a list of drivers on my computer. In that there are two drivers, the AGERE OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Compliant Host Controller and OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Compliant Host Controller. I tried both of them, and got the same speed results. There isn't any option for legacy or old or anything resembling that. I also unchecked the show compatible hardware option and went through every driver available, and none had legacy or old version. I'm thinking of just returning the FW800 enclosure I have as it doesn't seem to work in Windows, and the speed in OSX isn't as good as it should be either.
 
I'm going to resurrect this thread in search of an answer. I got rid of my firewire enclosure, and ordered a firewire drive that should be coming in the next couple days. I'd like to get this working for it's arrival. So, any idea how I can update the driver when the legacy driver isn't listed?
 
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