One more reason why USB 2.0 SUCKS!!!!

[tugboat]

This has been an interesting read! I've been trying to get my external 2.0 HD to run at hispeed for weeks now. I have an ASUS P4T533-C with the NEC USB 2.0 controller. I am running XP PRO w/SP1 and every other USB patch they had. I can only get the darn thing to transfer 17.3MB/s where the Firewire connection on the drive is able to do 33.2MB/s. I completely removed all USB but the drive, disabled all non USB 2.0 controllers and hubs on the system and it still won't do it. I don't know if just disabling them in device manager is enough, though. The BIOS and/or jumpers only let me disable 2.0.

The strange thing is that the manual says there are a total of 4 USB 2.0 ports available, but when I look at the 2.0 hub in Device Manager, it says there are 5 ports available. He header on the board supposedly only has two and there are two on the back. So I wonder where the other one is or if the count is wrong and this might account for the slow transfer rates. I'm higher than 1.1, but way off from 2.0 hispeed.

Does anyone know if the headers on the system board support more than two? If so, I might try and get a USB back plate with three connections on it and see what happens. Will a USB 1.0 back plate header work with 2.0?

Thanks and sorry for just jumping in here.

[spadnos]

@Tugboat: What drive is in your external enclosure? Also, what enclosure are you using (more specifically, what chipset is in the enclosure)?

The USB spec says that 480Mbps is the signaling rate, but it doesn't say anything about how fast the source has to provide data...

You may be limitied by hard drive speed or, more likely, the ATA to USB interface chip.

- Steve

)evetS eb dluow ti yadot(

[tugboat]

I'm using the WD 250G USB2.0/Firewire combo drive. Just by benchmarking with the fire wire, I know the drive is capable of higher speeds, so it's either the interface on the drive, or the USB 2.0 implemented on my system board (asus p4t533-c).

Last night I removed all USB devices and disabled all but the USB 2.0 controller. It didn't help. I did notice that when the VEO Velocity 2.0 hispeed cam was removed the drive did a bit better, but no matter what I did I couldn't break the 19BM/s barrier.

The 2.0 controller is on the PCI bus as is the ATA controller and the firewire card is in one of the slots. With the speeds acheived by the firewire, I'd have to assume there's no bottle neck there.

P.S. How much CPU does USB 2.0 use when doing sustained transfers.l Firewire takes no more than 4%, but the USB 2.0s sustained rate uses roughly 15% and is half the speed.

Thanks

[spadnos]

I don't know about CPU usage - I'm sure it varies a lot.

Removing other devices makes sense. The USB speed is the total amount of data that all peripherals on a hub can use. If the camera was attached to the same root hub (probably each pair of connectors from the motherboard are on the same root hub, and it's possible that all connectors on the motherboard share one root hub), then any bandwidth it was using would be "taken" away from the hard drive.

- Steve

[Jammrock]

And what has all this USB talk taught us? USB sucks. Firewire rules.

The end.

Jammrock

[spadnos]

FireWire is largely the same, they just started out at the USB 2.0 speed range. They were a bit smarter in that they chose a different connector for FW800 - you can't manage to use a crappy old cable with FW800, because you will always be at the slower speed if you need the old style connector.

Yes - USB does suck.
FireWire Sucks Less.

- Steve

[agallag]

I don't think it's fair to say USB sucks. Considering my experience that I related above, it's not bad at all. Certainly one hell of a lot better than it used to be with serial and parallel ports. I've also heard horror stories about firewire. It all depends on the implementation.

Sure, USB could be better, but what in the computer industry couldn't stand a little improvement?

[High_Jumbllama]

Even properly functioning USB 2.0 hard drives do not go all the way up to 480 mbps/60MBs or evn 240 mbps. The One we use at work for data backup only goes up to around 40mbps and the external enclosure I have maxes out at around 56 mbps. What's the device's rated speed(s)?

[Wombat]

Originally posted by spadnos
FireWire is largely the same, they just started out at the USB 2.0 speed range.
- Steve

No, firewire is very different. It's all built into dedicated hardware.

[spadnos]

Originally posted by Wombat
No, firewire is very different. It's all built into dedicated hardware.

So is USB. (if you mean that the controller is a separate piece of logic)

They both share bandwidth between devices.
They are both high speed serial protocols.
They both require the host software to divvy up time/data slots for different devices (though I believe USB does more in the OS drivers than FireWire).
They both have very short cable requirements (4.5m for FireWire, unless you use low data rates or glass optical fiber, about 5.5m for USB)
They both auto-detect device addition/removal (actually, FireWire is a little worse here because it's possible for all devices to be renumbered when any device is added/removed - USB uses a hierarchical numbering scheme)

They are quite different in implementation, but very similar from many user perspectives.

- Steve

[Wombat]

USB does a LOT more in software than Firewire does.

[Kurt]

Firewire was interesting years ago when it got released. Apple failed to give the standard enough of a competitive edge for it to progress much so now USB caught up.

USB 2.0 is not what Firewire is, but it's a hell of a lot more compatible with everybody's hardware...and it's much cheaper. End of Firewire SOON.

[High_Jumbllama]

Not the end. It will go the way of SCSI. It will be relegated to high end uses.

[Wombat]

No, it will become more common, I think. Firewire is great for digital video, for example. The thought of a USB2 camcorder scares the hell out of me, it would never work right. At least having the Firewire controller on board puts a stable solution there.

[xortam]

Originally posted by Wombat
... Firewire is great for digital video, for example. ...

FireWire is used for recording video but DVI-HDCP (or HDMI) is the current standard used for playback to TV equipment.