[tlug] USB2 external HDD (Was: New computer parts)

[Darren Cook <darren@example.com>]

> You concern maybe the speed of the combo: IDE + Firewire. You choices are:
> 
> 1. USB 2.0 ( external HDD ) + USB 2.0 ( camera )
> 2. USB 2.0 ( external HDD ) + Firewire ( camera )
> 3. SATA ( HDD ) + USB 2.0
> 4. SATA ( HDD ) + Firewire.
> 5. IDE ( HDD ) + Firewire
> 6. IDE ( HDD ) + USB.
> 
> 4. is the fastest and 6. is the slowest. Don't go for 6 ( or even 5. )
> if you care about the speed.
> IDE is slow and if you have to copy 4GB or 8GB of pictures each time
> like me, you will have to wait a long time.

My experience is USB 2 is "quick enough" (but still feels slower than
IDE) for the first 1Gb and then immensely slower after that. What
appears to happen is that after 1G of transfer it switches to USB 1 speeds.

This is on Fedora Core 5, and has happened constantly through a few
upgrades of the 2.6 kernel (i.e. 1+ years ago and still happening). When
copying 1.9G to a 2Gb USB memory stick the quickest way is to copy in
three batches, and umount then re-mount the drive between each. That
takes about 4 minutes, compared to 20+ minutes if I just copy it all in
one go. I've also noticed the same problem with a 300G external HDD,
which was basically unusable (e.g. 200G transfer, with the last 199G at
USB 1 speeds...).

Are other people seeing this? If not, is it just a Fedora problem? Or a
bad diagnosis (the thumb drive is probably vfat, but I think the HDD was
ext3)?

Darren