2GB Flash Voyager running at USB1 speed on Win98SE

[GEHughes]

Hi,

Flash Voyager Utility & Drive installed fine. Have previously installed Belkin USB2 Host PCI add-on card.

All USB 2.0 Controllers installed as listed:

Belkin USB 2.0 High Speed Host Controller

Generic USB Hub on USB 2.0 Bus

USB 2.0 Root Hub Device

 

USB Mass Storage Device driver installed from USB Flash Disk Utility programme.

 

Flash Disk runs at a painfully slow 1.9Megabits per second write speed - hardly USB1 speed(!).

 

Would be grateful for any advice on getting the Drive running faster.

 

Many thanks.

[Wired]

have you tested the port w/ any other 2.0 devices? Have you tested your USB stick in any other PCs?

[RAM GUY]

Yes please test the drive in another system if you can.

[GEHughes]

Thank you both for your speedy and helpful response.

 

I've now had chance to do some more testing and I'm learning there's a big difference in write speeds depending on how complex the file structure is that I'm trying to copy.

 

On my machine (Win98SE + USB2 Card):

The best write speed achieved for a single 95MB file was 4.75MB/sec (38Mb/sec).

For a single 1213MB file I could only get 2.49MB/sec (20Mb/sec).

For multi-files & folders (3727 files & 488 folders) 290MB in size took an amazingly slow 0.28MB/sec (2.2Mb/sec) - which is what I was basing my initial comments on.

 

Would you expect such a wide variation?

 

Incidentally, it would be really useful if there was a benchmark utility programme available to test flash drive data transfer speeds - do any exist?

 

Also did a couple of tests using a friend's Sony Laptop running WinXP + USB2 Port:

117MB Single file writing at 8.4MB/sec (67Mb/sec)

518MB Single file writing at 7.8MB/sec (62Mb/sec)

 

Not sure what you make of these results?

 

Clearly my machine isn't the fastest on the planet, however, it is in fact delivering higher speeds than USB1 but sadly not the 'lightening' write speeds I was hoping for. Also, write speeds can be vastly reduced (by a factor of 10+) when backing up lots of small files which, unfortunately, was my main reason for purchasing the drive.

 

Would appreciate any comments, recommendations or advice.

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

Regards, Graham.

[SpDFrek]

The flash drive performance will vary greatly depending on the host controller being used and the enviroment. It is completly normal to see different transfer rates on different file sizes. USB 2.0 is a spec and there are different types of USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed, Full Speed, and one other) giving vastly different performance. SiSoft Sandra has a benchmarking utility that has a special "Flash" test built in that tests the read/write speed of the drive at various file sizes. Also, the 2GB Flash Voyager is only rated for a 9 MB's write, the read however is at 17 MB's.