USB 3.0 External drive not transfering data at superspeed.

[synack]

Re: USB 3.0 External drive not transfering data at superspeed.

OK lets start with doing a little perf testing

run the command: hdparm -tT /dev/sdi

also run hdparm /dev/sdi
to see what parameters are set

[TonyLudwick]

Re: USB 3.0 External drive not transfering data at superspeed.

root@AntecNas1:/# hdparm -tT /dev/sdi

/dev/sdi:
Timing cached reads: 3436 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1717.49 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 376 MB in 3.01 seconds = 124.75 MB/sec



root@AntecNas1:/# hdparm /dev/sdi

/dev/sdi:
multcount = 1 (on)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 364801/255/63, sectors = 5860533168, start = 0

[synack]

Re: USB 3.0 External drive not transfering data at superspeed.

well it seems the usb/scsi subsystem is more than capable of transferring the data at the speed you expect. ~125MB/sec is definitely faster than what you were expecting. So either the drive itself is really slow to write which you say works else where, so probably not that. Or the data you are reading from is really slow. where is the 3.7 GB you are reading from?

You can also do a write speed test.

I'm not sure where you have that disk mounted but you can create a file to write like this, that does not depend on a source drive

time dd if=/dev/zero of=/whatever/path/and/filename bs=1M count=3700

should output something like:
3700+0 records in
3700+0 records out
3879731200 bytes (3.9 GB) copied, 15.405 s, 252 MB/s

real 0m15.406s
user 0m0.002s
sys 0m1.545s

[TonyLudwick]

Re: USB 3.0 External drive not transfering data at superspeed.

This particular macine has a 10 TB raid5 software raid array where the file resides. I have also made a copy of the file on the OS drive and tried copying it from there to the external and got same result. The file copied to the external in about 20 seconds using Windows 2008 Server on this same equipment. When I performed the test on the Dell T3400 I used the same USB 3.0 Card removed fro the other box, same external drive, same version of ubuntu and the file copied in 35-40 seconds. When I copy these files, I typically do them like "time cp B2D000208.bkf /media/UsbDrive" from within the source directory. Given the above information, are there any settings in the BIOS setup that control how wide a gate gets opened that is on the road between the internal hard drive and the external hard drive? A gate that if set to "Auto", windows would be able to command it to open all the way, but linux might not be able to control at all, requiring us to choose a manual setting? I am not a hardware guy, so forgive my simplistic description. :) But I think you understand what I am asking.



Results from the command you shared:

root@AntecNas1:/# time dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/UsbDrive/file2.bkf bs=1M count=3700
3700+0 records in
3700+0 records out
3879731200 bytes (3.9 GB) copied, 209.848 s, 18.5 MB/s

real 3m29.896s
user 0m0.008s
sys 0m59.372s

[synack]

Re: USB 3.0 External drive not transfering data at superspeed.

No I dont think there is anything that should be limiting or setting a gate size as it were.

We proved earlier that the "gate" is capable and willing to push through about 125 MB/sec.
I'm now thinking it may have something to do with the partitioning of the drive. or something like that.
It doesn't make sense that we can access the "drive" at 125MB/sec and the partitition at only 18.5. write's will be slower than reads for sure.. but not that slow.

try a read of a file on that drive and see what we get
like:
time dd if=/media/UsbDrive/file3.bkf of=/dev/null bs=1M

[TonyLudwick]

Re: USB 3.0 External drive not transfering data at superspeed.

The partition of the drive is NTFS on the external drive. If the partition was an issue, wouldn't the Dell T3400 running the same Ubuntu OS have a problem with it too?
Looks like 29 seconds for the read. That is about what the write should be.

root@AntecNas1:/# time dd if=/media/UsbDrive/file1.bkf of=/dev/null bs=1M
3806+1 records in
3806+1 records out
3991213056 bytes (4.0 GB) copied, 29.3082 s, 136 MB/s

real 0m29.327s
user 0m0.012s
sys 0m6.952s

[synack]

Re: USB 3.0 External drive not transfering data at superspeed.

NTFS write on linux is an experimental feature and is not one of my strengths. You may have a tweak or patch on the other ubuntu that you don't have here.
I would google for NTFS tweaks on ubuntu. maybe disabling atime might help.
Best case in my opinion would be to format that drive as ext3 if at all possible, but I assume you chose ntfs to make it portable with windows.
I'm however quite sure that it's not a hardware issue.

If you have anymore questions I will continue to monitor this thread, however I really don't know a whole lot about making NTFS work properly on any linux. It's always been too buggy for my taste.

Sorry, and best of luck
Syn

[TonyLudwick]

Re: USB 3.0 External drive not transfering data at superspeed.

Good Afternoon Syn,
I am working with the people at Ubuntu support on this and they wanted to know if the beta BIOS release that is out there for this motherboard had any changes that would be significant to our issue. Do you have the ability to tell? We are currently at 2.0.

Regards,
Tony