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#1
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WD My Book ext HD - why so slow?
I recently bought a Western Digital 1 TB external HD ('My Book'). But
backups seem to be glacially slow. As part of trying to understand this I ran Process Monitor (ProcMon). It seems that even quite modest sized files are taking seconds to copy. During that time the ProcMon output looks like this for scores or hundreds of lines, all referring to the same file: PID Operation Path Result --- --------- -------------------------- ------------------- 3224 WriteFile K: SUCCESS 3224 ReadFile C:\Docs\My Videos\MAGIX... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... FAST IO DISALLOWED 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K: SUCCESS 3224 ReadFile C:\Docs\My Videos\MAGIX... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... FAST IO DISALLOWED 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K: SUCCESS Can anyone tell me if this offers any clue to the cause of the slowness please? Or offer any other advice on speeding it up? For example, should I change the FAT32 file structure to NTFS? If so, presumably there's no way I can achieve that with the data still in place? I'm not a programmer so would appreciate a reply that's not over-technical please. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK |
#2
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WD My Book ext HD - why so slow?
Terry Pinnell wrote:
I recently bought a Western Digital 1 TB external HD ('My Book'). But backups seem to be glacially slow. You'll have to give us more details. Are you connected via USB, Firewire, or eSATA? If it's USB, is you computer able to do USB 2.0, or is it limited to USB 1.1? As part of trying to understand this I ran Process Monitor (ProcMon). It seems that even quite modest sized files are taking seconds to copy. During that time the ProcMon output looks like this for scores or hundreds of lines, all referring to the same file: PID Operation Path Result --- --------- -------------------------- ------------------- 3224 WriteFile K: SUCCESS 3224 ReadFile C:\Docs\My Videos\MAGIX... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... FAST IO DISALLOWED 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K: SUCCESS 3224 ReadFile C:\Docs\My Videos\MAGIX... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... FAST IO DISALLOWED 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K: SUCCESS Can anyone tell me if this offers any clue to the cause of the slowness please? "Fast IO disallowed" seems to be a major clue, sure. This comes back down to whether you're using USB 1.1 or 2.0, from before. Or offer any other advice on speeding it up? For example, should I change the FAT32 file structure to NTFS? If so, presumably there's no way I can achieve that with the data still in place? Windows comes with a utility called simply "convert", which you run from a DOS command-line that will convert FAT to NTFS without destroying data. However, switching from FAT to NTFS isn't likely to buy you much extra performance, especially on sequential operations like this. NTFS is more of an advantage when doing random file accesses. I'm not a programmer so would appreciate a reply that's not over-technical please. Don't worry, programmers probably wouldn't understand this stuff, it's hardware. :-) Yousuf Khan |
#3
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WD My Book ext HD - why so slow?
Yousuf Khan wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote: I recently bought a Western Digital 1 TB external HD ('My Book'). But backups seem to be glacially slow. You'll have to give us more details. Are you connected via USB, Firewire, or eSATA? If it's USB, is you computer able to do USB 2.0, or is it limited to USB 1.1? Thanks Yousuf. It's connected to one of the USB 2.0 sockets on this PC (Quad Core Q9450 2.66 GHz, 4 GB ). As part of trying to understand this I ran Process Monitor (ProcMon). It seems that even quite modest sized files are taking seconds to copy. During that time the ProcMon output looks like this for scores or hundreds of lines, all referring to the same file: PID Operation Path Result --- --------- -------------------------- ------------------- 3224 WriteFile K: SUCCESS 3224 ReadFile C:\Docs\My Videos\MAGIX... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... FAST IO DISALLOWED 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K: SUCCESS 3224 ReadFile C:\Docs\My Videos\MAGIX... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... FAST IO DISALLOWED 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K:\2ndCopyBackups-Weekly... SUCCESS 3224 WriteFile K: SUCCESS Can anyone tell me if this offers any clue to the cause of the slowness please? "Fast IO disallowed" seems to be a major clue, sure. This comes back down to whether you're using USB 1.1 or 2.0, from before. Yes, my first thought was along those lines. It seemed reminiscent of messages I once had when the port had somehow reverted to 1.0 performance - or maybe it was the device, I'm vague about it now. But anyway, I don't see why I should be getting anything other than 2.0 performance in this case. It's not as if I'm using a USB 'hub', which I gather *can* reduce speed because of sharing. Or offer any other advice on speeding it up? For example, should I change the FAT32 file structure to NTFS? If so, presumably there's no way I can achieve that with the data still in place? Windows comes with a utility called simply "convert", which you run from a DOS command-line that will convert FAT to NTFS without destroying data. However, switching from FAT to NTFS isn't likely to buy you much extra performance, especially on sequential operations like this. NTFS is more of an advantage when doing random file accesses. I went ahead earlier this evening, after copying 280 GB from K: back to an internal HD. (Had I been less impatient and seen your suggestion about Convert, I could have avoided that!) I used Quick Format and was pleased to find that took only a few seconds to change K to NTFS. I'm now some way through the re-copying stage and can confirm that it doesn't seem significantly faster. I'm not a programmer so would appreciate a reply that's not over-technical please. Don't worry, programmers probably wouldn't understand this stuff, it's hardware. :-) Yousuf Khan -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK |
#4
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WD My Book ext HD - why so slow?
On Apr 20, 5:22*pm, Terry Pinnell
wrote: You'll have to give us more details. Are you connected via USB, Firewire, or eSATA? If it's USB, is you computer able to do USB 2.0, or is it limited to USB 1.1? Thanks Yousuf. It's connected to one of the USB 2.0 sockets on this PC (Quad Core Q9450 2.66 GHz, 4 GB ). Yeah, well that should be new enough that it's actually got USB 2.0 ports. Now whether they are actually connecting up at USB 2.0 speeds is another matter. You will need to determine that with software. "Fast IO disallowed" seems to be a major clue, sure. This comes back down to whether you're using USB 1.1 or 2.0, from before. Yes, my first thought was along those lines. It seemed reminiscent of messages I once had when the port had somehow reverted to 1.0 performance - or maybe it was the device, I'm vague about it now. But anyway, I don't see why I should be getting anything other than 2.0 performance in this case. It's not as if I'm using a USB 'hub', which I gather *can* reduce speed because of sharing. There is a utility available for download from Microsoft called UVCView. One available for x86 (32-bit) versions of Windows and one for x64 (64-bit) versions. This lists all kinds of detailed information about your USB connections. The most basic thing it can tell you is whether you're running a device in USB 1.1 or 2.0 mode. If the device gets listed under "Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller", then it's 2.0 mode. Anything else and it's 1.1 mode. Or offer any other advice on speeding it up? For example, should I change the FAT32 file structure to NTFS? If so, presumably there's no way I can achieve that with the data still in place? Windows comes with a utility called simply "convert", which you run from a DOS command-line that will convert FAT to NTFS without destroying data. However, switching from FAT to NTFS isn't likely to buy you much extra performance, especially on sequential operations like this. NTFS is more of an advantage when doing random file accesses. I went ahead earlier this evening, after copying 280 GB from K: back to an internal HD. (Had I been less impatient and seen your suggestion about Convert, I could have avoided that!) I used Quick Format and was pleased to find that took only *a few seconds to change K to NTFS. I'm now some way through the re-copying stage and can confirm that it doesn't seem significantly faster. Yeah, I didn't expect any performance improvements from NTFS. I typically prefer to keep external HD's formatted as FAT as there's more guarantees that it work under different operating systems, such as Linux or OSX. But both those OS's have NTFS drivers these days which are getting better, so it may be irrelevant. Yousuf Khan |
#5
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WD My Book ext HD - why so slow?
"Terry Pinnell" wrote in message ... I recently bought a Western Digital 1 TB external HD ('My Book'). But backups seem to be glacially slow. snip Can anyone tell me if this offers any clue to the cause of the slowness please? just a thought: have you tried using any other USB cables?... IME, these WD drives seem to come with some of the worst USB cables I have probably seen (poor quality, also having a bad habit of getting connection problems later on, ...), and so nearly any other USB cable may well be an improvement. then again, the WD MyBook's I have dealt with have not been so recent, so they may have started including better USB cables for all I know... another thing to note: external USB HD's are almost invariably slower than internal drives by a not-so-small margin (even with 2.0...). so, although I don't know how fast you are getting, there is a risk that this is full speed. if a firewire port is available, may well be worth trying this, as it has generally worked better IME... just a few thoughts... Or offer any other advice on speeding it up? For example, should I change the FAT32 file structure to NTFS? If so, presumably there's no way I can achieve that with the data still in place? I have had worse luck with NTFS on external drives than with FAT32... NTFS has a certain annoyance that pops up sometimes which I will refer to as "sudden explosive death" (although I suspect I have been the only one to see it among all the apparent "NTFS HELL YEAH!" comments I have seen around...), so I would hesitate to recommend it for external drives (although, for all I know, it has either been an artifact of bad luck or a bug in XP's NTFS drivers or similar...). side effects of sudden explosive death (should it happen): "this drive is not formatted, format now?" (due to actual currupted data, although WD's crap USB cables don't help...); if you plug in the drive, XP freezes, and if connected at boot time, XP freezes during boot (AKA: may need Linux to get the thing formatted...); .... another good bit of device: using bittorrent on external USB drives is a bad idea (not done personally, but someone I knew did this a lot, and it almost invariably lead to filesystem corruption within a not-too-long period of time, and so it is better to torrent onto an internal HD and copy over data to the external drive...). but, other than all this, everything works fairly well, and so I will mostly recommend these drives... I'm not a programmer so would appreciate a reply that's not over-technical please. this is more IT domain than programmer domain anyways... although, as a programmer, I do know enough about drives, filesystems, and OS innards, to know just how much a fragile peice of glass all this stuff is (and how the well touted journaling is not always the pancea it is made out to be...). oh well, "this is my story" broken into 10 unicode char chunks and stored in 32 byte directory entries sorted in reverse order... or such... -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK |
#6
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WD My Book ext HD - why so slow?
"cr88192" wrote in message ... snip oh well, "this is my story" broken into 10 unicode char chunks and stored in 32 byte directory entries sorted in reverse order... at which my little forray into the land of arrogant *******ry contains an error: it is 13 unicode characters... oh well, no hint of pride can be allowed, this is life... or such... |
#7
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WD My Book ext HD - why so slow?
cr88192 wrote:
"cr88192" wrote in message ... snip oh well, "this is my story" broken into 10 unicode char chunks and stored in 32 byte directory entries sorted in reverse order... at which my little forray into the land of arrogant *******ry contains an error: it is 13 unicode characters... The spaces are Unicode characters as well. [Jw] |
#8
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WD My Book ext HD - why so slow?
"[Jongware]" wrote in message ... cr88192 wrote: "cr88192" wrote in message ... snip oh well, "this is my story" broken into 10 unicode char chunks and stored in 32 byte directory entries sorted in reverse order... at which my little forray into the land of arrogant *******ry contains an error: it is 13 unicode characters... The spaces are Unicode characters as well. yep... I was making an opaque reference to the way long filenames were encoded in FAT based filesystems... but, I had originally said 10 chars per dir entry, but actually it is 13 chars. [Jw] |
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