Copying from external device very slow

Question

i am running debian lenny on my machine. The problem is when I try to copy data from usb device to my hdd, The transfer rate is very very slow, Even if i put 10MB file to copy it takes arround 15min to cp to hdd. But the same usb device it i connect to laptop it works fine. Even it was problem when etch was there, i though it may get solved after upgrading to lenny. Is there any solution for this..

Is it a USB drive or usb based external hdd or some usb communication device like phone? — Viky, Jun 04 '09 at 11:43

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 04 '09 at 10:55

As Bernd asked:

Which usb module is loaded? uhci or ehci

lsmod | grep hci

The output should look something like this:

uhci_hcd               22404  0 
ehci_hcd               34688  0 
usbcore               134576  5 oss_usb,usbhid,uhci_hcd,ehci_hcd

If it only shows uhci and not ehci, then the usb 2.0 drivers just aren't loading

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 04 '09 at 10:27

1

Does your desktop have USB 2? Is the specific port you're using USB 2?

You can check by looking whether the USB HCI driver module is ohci/uhci (USB 1) or ehci (USB 2).

answered Jun 04 '09 at 10:27

Bernd Haug

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No! i am not running it on any specific port. – Caterpillar Jun 04 '09 at 10:29
It's possible that the machine only has USB 1 ports, or it has USB 2 ports but you plugged it into a slower USB 1 port without realizing. The laptop almost certainly has the faster USB 2 ports, which is why it's faster there. – Mark Jun 14 '09 at 02:24
No, My comp has 4 ports, 2 ports back side and front side 2, Even i checked it, Its show very slow.. – Caterpillar Jun 15 '09 at 10:30

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 04 '09 at 13:40

I would check the output of "dmesg" to see if the kernel or the drivers are outputting any error messages. I've had very slow reads and writes with certain drivers (old NTFS drivers before NTFS-3G, for example) that were fixed by upgrading to a newer version.

You could also check "lspci -v" to see if the kernel thinks your onboard USB controllers are 1.0 or 2.0 (ohci/uhci is USB1, ehci is USB2).

"lsusb" can also list the detected USB devices and can assist in troubleshooting.

If this drive is NTFS, also look at the NTFS-3G driver. It's fast, reliable, and works beautifully with my 300G external USB drive.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 04 '09 at 14:34

Some machines have slow and fast USB sockets. On mine, for instance, there are 2 USB sockets on the keyboard that are very slow (but much more convenient), but the ones on the back of the machine itself are much faster. If I have any sizeable files to transfer, I use the ones on the machine.

Copying from external device very slow

4 Answers4