diagnosing slow external USB harddrive?

[tokyo_x40]

Are X4* thinkpads just plain slow with external drives? I was copying some files from a USB 2.0 external drive, and a friend noticed that the speed was about 10x slower than it should be. And yes, on a second friend's Gateway laptop, he was right. How and why should a Gateway be 10x faster than my X40?

On my box, I've timed a large 350 mb file at 110 seconds, so about 3 megabytes per second. It's better than nothing, but clearly there's a bottleneck other than my fixed HD.

I don't know the best way to diagnose the problem. Can anyone give me advice?

Here's my vitals, and what I've done so far:

thinkpad: X40, 1.2 ghz, 1.5 gb ram, WinXP Pro fully updated
external USB drive: 80 gig BUFFALO 5400rpm 1.8inch (I think), powered by 2 USB cables, listed as USB 2.0. Reformatted* (see FWIW below) as NTFS.

Diagnosis:
* First I checked IBM for BIOS updates, but none of the fixes since my version (1.43 1UET93WW 2004-10-13, Embedded controller 1.12) apply to USB issues. I prefer not to flash BIOS unless it's known to fix a problem I have.
* Second, thinking it might be a USB driver conflict, in Device Manager I uninstalled all host controllers (therefore all entries) under the USB section and the rebooted. Upon (slow) reboot, it recreated the following entries

• Intel(R) 82801DB/DBM USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller - 24CD
  Intel(R) 82801DB/DBM USB Universal Host Controller - 24C2
  Intel(R) 82801DB/DBM USB Universal Host Controller - 24C4
  Intel(R) 82801DB/DBM USB Universal Host Controller - 24C7

For each of the above entries, there's a "USB Root Hub" entry as well. And when the disk is attached, there's a "USB Mass Storage Device" entry as well, which under Properties > Locations lists "Location 0 (USB 2.0-IDE Bridge Adapter)".

However, the transfer times have not increased. The above entries where there before, anyway.
* Third, I ran Diagnostics after rebooting pressing the blue Access IBM button, which initated the DOS program PC Doctor. Under Utility > Benchmark there is no USB Drive or Mass Storage option. The external drive _is_ detected as being a secondary IDE drive, and it's listed as being removable. (However, it's not listed as a Logical Drive.. for that it seems to only list the 4 gig IBM service partition and some other 8 mb drive, a RAM drive maybe?)

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That's where I'm at. Advice?

When I uninstalled my USB entries, did it also erase info for my digital camera?

Also, if someone out there has practical experience with this kind of drive on their X4* machine, can you tell me how fast files usually transfer? A 350 mb file, by my stopwatch, takes about 2 minutes to read or write. Sometimes the estimate by winXP is correct, and sometimes it's initial estimate is a factor of 2 over.


FWIW: BUFFALO is a reputable name here in Japan, but early after using the drive I did get some bad sectors. Immediately after buying it I successfully backed up a 20 gig folder without timing it (just let it finish, maybe ~30 min?), then I put the drive away. After 2 weeks, there were suddenly read/write errors, and I had to reformat the drive as ntfs using a gparted boot disk (winXP couldn't do it), then run chkdsk /f /r /x on it. chkdsk reported about 100 mb of bad sectors. However, after that it's worked like a champ and has even survived Tokyo super-humidity. (And in case you're wondering, No, returns in Japan are not standard practice.)

Now that I've been digging for info on drive speed, I have an idea about why the drive might have had some problems. I stumbled on the whole "left usb is underpowered" problem. (Check this post and also there's a very similar post in the T4* forum.) I can't be 100% sure, but my drive might have crashed after I used the left side for my power-only USB cable and the right side for the actual USB data cable. Since I'm right-handed, and since the data cable is shorter, I usually put it on the left side with the power cable wrapping around to the right side. But again, that's just a guess.

Anyway, now that the bad sectors are identified, I wouldn't suspect they would be causing such a decrease in speed (factor of 10!), but I'm mentioning it just in case.

[tokyo_x40]

Guess my problem ain't so interesting. Or it's too hard.

Update: the bad sectors don't matter, because my friend's identical drive also runs at the slow speed. So the following questions still remain

• -- What's a good benchmark program for external drives?
  -- Is it using the right driver?
  -- What's the real-world MB/sec I should expect for USB 2.0 on my x40?

Thanks for any & all words of advice (or pity!)

[christopher_wolf]

Use HDTune. Benchmark it and then post links to the screenshots of the I/O Ops benchmark charts.

Check how it is mounting the drive and what UDMA mode it is under; ideally, it should be at 5 or, at the very least, 3. Anything else and you have a problem. Even at the highest, UDMA 5, the USB 2.0 should not bottleneck the transfer.

Also, Buffalo 80GB 1.8"? That is a new one if I have heard of it, bet IBM would like to their hands on *that* for the internal HDD in the X4X Series Thinkpads.

I would get a powered enclosure for it, especially with the X Series. USB can only haul through 500mA as per spec, anything more and you run the risk of damage.

HTH

[tokyo_x40]

Use HDTune. Benchmark it and then post links to the screenshots of the I/O Ops benchmark charts.

OK, I'll check it and report back after this weekend.

Oh, and about the drive: don't hold me to the 1.8" guess, could very easily be something else. I found a link to a similar drive, mine is a bit different on the outside (mine = no hollow shock case)
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/pro ... egoryid=24

[tokyo_x40]

Use HDTune. Benchmark it and then post links to the screenshots of the I/O Ops benchmark charts.

Results:
USB Drive:
>>For some reason, my browser (firefox) won't load the following images automatically, with a error from the host I'm using, blogger. But if I copy the link location into a new window/tab it works
Benchmark shows 25 MB/sec , and in case you're curious: Drive Info... and, for kicks, the Error Scan, (health had no info)

Because it was so easy, I also checked my internal Hitachi 40 GB drive
Benchmark , Info, (no errors), health

The rate limiting step appears to be my internal hard drive!! 3.5 MB/sec.

HDtune lists UDMA-5 for the primary drive, but Device Manager shows PIO mode. Searched, & I found your previous reply to this post in May, and several other related posts. Haven't tried the regedit fix yet, but this explaination seems best.

My drive had a BAD click problem about a year ago, and I feared the worst, but then it suddenly stopped. Perhaps that's when XP decided that the drive couldn't handle DMA.

Remaining Question:

• In case my click problems return after the fix, does anyone know if I can reverse the regedit fix, to force PIO mode again? To be explicit, after deleting the following key to fix the problem, can I put it back in to return to my current (slow but alive) condition? Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} Subkey: 0004, Entry: MasterIdDataCheckSum

And thanks a lot for suggesting HDtune.

PS. FYI, for the external drive:

Check how it is mounting the drive and what UDMA mode it is under; ideally, it should be at 5 or, at the very least, 3. Anything else and you have a problem. Even at the highest, UDMA 5, the USB 2.0 should not bottleneck the transfer.

There was no info from HDtune on that. Also, no temperature info is reported. However, in my system tray, a 34 C showed up, with a mouse-over saying it was for my HITACHI_DK13FA_40B. The drive's casing feels warm after the tests, but not hot.

Also, Buffalo 80GB 1.8"? That is a new one if I have heard of it, bet IBM would like to their hands on *that* for the internal HDD in the X4X Series Thinkpads.

HDtune lists the drive as SAMSUNG MP0804H (80 GB). Is that a drive "we" already know about?