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From: Charliec on 9 Sep 2008 14:30
On Tue, 09 Sep 2008 06:15:27 -0400, Bob Willard
<BobwBSGS(a)TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote:

>Charliec wrote:
>
>> I purchased the external WD Essential 320GB to replace my external WD
>> 80GB drive. When launching programs from the Essential, it is very
>> slow compared to the WD 80GB drive I replaced. Both drives are
>> external and connected via a USB2.0 port.
>>
>> What can I do to speed up the access to the program launching and
>> other accessing to the WD Essential 320GB external drive?
>>
>> Thanks for any tips/suggestions/
>>
>> Charliec
>> ******************************************************
>> Charliec
>
>FWIW, I measured the read speed of my 500GB MyBook, using HDtach, at
>~29 MB/s across the whole 500GB. USB 2.0 on a 3GHz P4 under XP SP3.
Ok,
I downloaded and ran HDtach using the "Long Bench" tests. It came
back at 32.9 MB/s - so I guess it is running at USB 2.0!
Thanks
Charliec
******************************************************
Charliec
From: Arno Wagner on 9 Sep 2008 20:23
Previously Charliec <charliec(a)invalid.address.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 09 Sep 2008 06:15:27 -0400, Bob Willard
> <BobwBSGS(a)TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote:

>>Charliec wrote:
>>
>>> I purchased the external WD Essential 320GB to replace my external WD
>>> 80GB drive. When launching programs from the Essential, it is very
>>> slow compared to the WD 80GB drive I replaced. Both drives are
>>> external and connected via a USB2.0 port.
>>>
>>> What can I do to speed up the access to the program launching and
>>> other accessing to the WD Essential 320GB external drive?
>>>
>>> Thanks for any tips/suggestions/
>>>
>>> Charliec
>>> ******************************************************
>>> Charliec
>>
>>FWIW, I measured the read speed of my 500GB MyBook, using HDtach, at
>>~29 MB/s across the whole 500GB. USB 2.0 on a 3GHz P4 under XP SP3.
> Ok,
> I downloaded and ran HDtach using the "Long Bench" tests. It came
> back at 32.9 MB/s - so I guess it is running at USB 2.0!
> Thanks
> Charliec
> ******************************************************
> Charliec

Definitely. Also 32.9 MB/s is pretty good for en external
enclosure. Maybe it is just that you had not configured
the other drive for fast removal. I think Windows remembers
these settings on a per drive basis, but I am not sure.

Arno
From: Mark F on 14 Sep 2008 20:29
On 10 Sep 2008 00:23:31 GMT, Arno Wagner <me(a)privacy.net> wrote:

> Previously Charliec <charliec(a)invalid.address.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 09 Sep 2008 06:15:27 -0400, Bob Willard
> > <BobwBSGS(a)TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote:
>
> >>Charliec wrote:
> >>
> >>> I purchased the external WD Essential 320GB to replace my external WD
> >>> 80GB drive. When launching programs from the Essential, it is very
> >>> slow compared to the WD 80GB drive I replaced. Both drives are
> >>> external and connected via a USB2.0 port.
> >>>
> >>> What can I do to speed up the access to the program launching and
> >>> other accessing to the WD Essential 320GB external drive?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for any tips/suggestions/
> >>>
> >>> Charliec
> >>> ******************************************************
> >>> Charliec
> >>
> >>FWIW, I measured the read speed of my 500GB MyBook, using HDtach, at
> >>~29 MB/s across the whole 500GB. USB 2.0 on a 3GHz P4 under XP SP3.
> > Ok,
> > I downloaded and ran HDtach using the "Long Bench" tests. It came
> > back at 32.9 MB/s - so I guess it is running at USB 2.0!
> > Thanks
> > Charliec
> > ******************************************************
> > Charliec
>
> Definitely. Also 32.9 MB/s is pretty good for en external
Very good for USB, poor for IEEE-1394a (45 MB/s is typical)
or eSATA (limited by disk speed, same as internal.)
(Some SATA adaptors and drivers support removal of drives from
a running Windows system, so it is fair to include eSATA in the
comparison.)
> enclosure. Maybe it is just that you had not configured
> the other drive for fast removal. I think Windows remembers
> these settings on a per drive basis, but I am not sure.
>
> Arno
From: Arno Wagner on 14 Sep 2008 22:30
Previously Mark F <mark49607(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10 Sep 2008 00:23:31 GMT, Arno Wagner <me(a)privacy.net> wrote:

>> Previously Charliec <charliec(a)invalid.address.com> wrote:
>> > On Tue, 09 Sep 2008 06:15:27 -0400, Bob Willard
>> > <BobwBSGS(a)TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> >>Charliec wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> I purchased the external WD Essential 320GB to replace my external WD
>> >>> 80GB drive. When launching programs from the Essential, it is very
>> >>> slow compared to the WD 80GB drive I replaced. Both drives are
>> >>> external and connected via a USB2.0 port.
>> >>>
>> >>> What can I do to speed up the access to the program launching and
>> >>> other accessing to the WD Essential 320GB external drive?
>> >>>
>> >>> Thanks for any tips/suggestions/
>> >>>
>> >>> Charliec
>> >>> ******************************************************
>> >>> Charliec
>> >>
>> >>FWIW, I measured the read speed of my 500GB MyBook, using HDtach, at
>> >>~29 MB/s across the whole 500GB. USB 2.0 on a 3GHz P4 under XP SP3.
>> > Ok,
>> > I downloaded and ran HDtach using the "Long Bench" tests. It came
>> > back at 32.9 MB/s - so I guess it is running at USB 2.0!
>> > Thanks
>> > Charliec
>> > ******************************************************
>> > Charliec
>>
>> Definitely. Also 32.9 MB/s is pretty good for en external
> Very good for USB, poor for IEEE-1394a (45 MB/s is typical)
> or eSATA (limited by disk speed, same as internal.)

Yes, indeed. One reason why I have drives with USB and SATA.
USB for convenience, and SATA when I need speed or SMART
access.

> (Some SATA adaptors and drivers support removal of drives from
> a running Windows system, so it is fair to include eSATA in the
> comparison.)

Also works under Linux with some controllers.

Arno
From: Arno Wagner on 15 Sep 2008 02:42
Previously Mark F <mark49607(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:57:34 -0700, Charliec
> <charliec(a)invalid.address.com> wrote:

>> I purchased the external WD Essential 320GB to replace my external WD
>> 80GB drive. When launching programs from the Essential, it is very
>> slow compared to the WD 80GB drive I replaced. Both drives are
>> external and connected via a USB2.0 port.
>>
>> What can I do to speed up the access to the program launching and
>> other accessing to the WD Essential 320GB external drive?
> I don't think you can speed it up, although there is a chance
> that using a different USB interface would speed things up.
> (I assume you are using USB 2.0 - I am referring to performance
> differences with different USB 2.0 interfaces, either on the
> same machine or another machine.)

> I had some film scanned to disk and it came back on a
> Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB
> UPC 7 18037 12270 0 R/N: ADC
> Order
> WDH1U10000N
> Model
> WD10000H1U-00

> The drive inside (I open up just about everything AFTER I test it -
> now that we know it works, lets see why.)
> seems to be
> WD P/N: WD10EAVS-00D780
> MDL: WD10EAVS-00D7B0
> DATE: 24 JUN 2008
> (I didn't take things apart far enough to see if the
> disk is a SATA test connected to an independent
> SATA-to-USB converter, or if the electronics is
> "melded together".)
> (Assuming that I copied the model number correctly after
> prying the My Book apart, the drive is a Western Digital
> Caviar GP WD10EACS 1TB 5400 to 7200 RPM
> 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
> Perhaps what appears to be variable speed affects the performance.)

> So it is a fairly recent drive and should have reasonable performance.
> However, I found that it performed poorly for a SATA drive connected
> to USB 2.0. (I also know from experience that USB 2.0 is typically
> 1/2 the speed of IEEE-1394a, and typically around 1/4 the speed
> of an eSATA connection to a SATA disk.)

> Here are the details:
> When I copied from the My Book Essential it only
> ran at about 15MB/second. (I typically see 22-25MB/second for
> USB 2.0 to SATA [as was the case here], and about 40-45MB/second
> for input from IEEE-1394a, and 60 MB/second for input from eSATA.)

> In other words, the drive performed poorly compared to other
> drives with USB 2.0/SATA interfaces, and USB 2.0 only runs
> at 1/2 of IEEE-1393a, 1/3 of what I can see for SATA copies.
> (My SATA adapter is on a PCI card, so my SATA-to-SATA copy operations
> are limited by the PCI bus speed.)

> HD Tach and HD Tune also showed low speeds compared to other
> USB 2.0/SATA disk external boxes. The numbers were about
> 15MB/second for HD Tune 2.53 and 17MB/second for
> HD Tach RW version 3.0.0. (I think the performance difference
> is due to HD Tune using a smaller read block size than HD Tach.)

> I used a (six year old) Gateway 700S 2.4 MHz, 512MB, Windows
> XP Professional with Service Pack 2 system for all of the
> tests and for the copy of the data files from the
> WD My Book Essential.

> (In my case, I suggested to the company that did the film scanning
> that they try a Western Digital My Book Home Edition, which has
> USB 2.0, IEEE-1394a, and eSATA if they couldn't get Studio
> Edition's formatted for Windows instead of Mac. However the
> company would have to weigh evaluating another disk type for their
> use as compared what probably would only allow overnight
> copies completing faster.)

Incidentially, it is not the fault of the drive. I have one of
these too, also opened, because I run SMART selftests (long) on
every disk periodically. Beginninf ogf the drive, it gives
abouy 88MB/s linear performance and about 45MB/s at the end.
However, since the enclosure is basically "free", as it costs
about the same as the bare drive (forget about that extra disk
memory, it costs WD nearly nothing and has almost no influence
on disk performance, since modern OSes use far larger
buffer/caches). I think for that the performance is reasonable.

The disk can be used without problem on its own (at least IO
had none), and the enclosure accepts other disks. I tried
an old Seagate 80GB ATA with a promise ATA-SATA adapter.
No problem at all.

Arno
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