USB 3.0

N01Chris

N01Chris

Messages
334
Name
Christian
Edit My Images
Yes
i have a transcend usb 3.0 card reader to go with my trancend 32gb x400 card

currently the speeds when transfering photos has been dissapointing :(

here are the results:

When transferring Pictures (raw, 18MP and average 25mb each and about a 1000 in the file):

USB 2.0 :- starts at 50MB/s and averages down to 28.1MB/s
USB 3.0 :- starts at 44MB/s and averages down to 12.5MB/s

When transferring Movies (.mp4, 720p and 973mb)

USB 2.0 :- starts at 57MB/s and averages down too 30.6MB/s
USB 3.0 :- starts at 4MB/s and averages up too 78MB/s

whats the problem with photos and usb 3.0??? its faster to use usb 2.0 :(
 
Last edited:
This is exactly what I saw with that kit and my shinny new mac mini. 8gb 600x seemed a little faster, so maybe not the reader, but then I haven't tested it enough. I have seen some comments that the 400x could be in fact an old 133x stock with a new label.

Good thing you reminded me - it's time to do couple more tests and contact Transcend or the retailer.


edit: I did speed test and the only bad thing is my 32GB 400x card (problem with reading). More details further down
 
Last edited:
daugirdas said:
This is exactly what I saw with that kit and my shinny new mac mini. 8gb 600x seemed a little faster, so maybe not the reader, but then I haven't tested it enough. I have seen some comments that the 400x could be in fact an old 133x stock with a new label.

Good thing you reminded me - it's time to do couple more tests and contact Transcend or the retailer.
Click to expand...

yea but when transferring movies its decent 70+MB/s so i doubt its faulty and i bought direct from amazon (actuall amazon) so i doubt its false advertising :S

Could i be that USB 3.0 is just bad at transferring lots of small photos?
 
hmmm strange, when i archive a folder containing 3Gb of photos using winrar the transfer rate jumps too 1GB/s till its transferred 2gb so for 2 seconds and then drops to 100MB/s

I think it must be that usb 3.0 is just bad at transferring small files :S

(all from memory card too laptop)

edit: scratch that... I've just relised i had it in a usb 2.0 port for that last test... not sure how that got 1GB/s :S
 
Last edited:
How are you testing this? Do you have USB2 and USB3 on the same PC?
 
It stays at 120MB/s in the USB 3.0 port during that last test the 1GB/s must have been an enomaly, probably because the folder was already on the ram because it had just finished archiving??
 
Are you using a different USB reader for the USB2 results?
Is the USB input you're connecting to on the PC USB3 compliant?

From the video transfer speed, I'd say it's more to do with your hard drive's random write speed during the photo transfers. The video file is probably filling the drive's buffer, allowing for a higher sustained throughput.

I could be wrong, but it's something you'd need to test over and over, to see if the numbers are similar each time.
Maybe, but it's a bit of a stretch, defragmenting the drive will leave a larger contiguous free space.
 
N01Chris said:
yea but when transferring movies its decent 70+MB/s so i doubt its faulty and i bought direct from amazon (actuall amazon) so i doubt its false advertising :S

Could i be that USB 3.0 is just bad at transferring lots of small photos?
Click to expand...

I doubt it is related to USB3 in any way, but rather the card or card controller itself. Mine is bought from the same place btw.

I'll have a good play with my 600x 'sports' card tonight or over the weekend. It performed really well in my bodies, and over usb2 the transfers used to be very quick. I haven't tried plugging in the 1d3 (usb2) directly to my mini yet.
On the other hand that 400x card felt surprisingly slow when shooting bursts in my 1Ds2, definitely slower than 4GB 300x I used before. I'll probably raise a warranty claim on these grounds alone.

Are there any FREE good mac apps for drive speed benchmarking and plotting ideally? There are a few things I need to measure.
 
Last edited:
N01Chris said:
yea, my laptop has two USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports
Click to expand...

Bingo - laptop. 5400rpm drive by any chance?
It also might be the USB chip used is optimised better for USB2 rather than USB3.
 
daugirdas said:
Are there any FREE good mac apps for drive speed benchmarking and plotting ideally? There are a few things I need to measure.
Click to expand...

Not free, unless you know how to look for the 'free' versions, but Disk Tools Pro is one that'll benchmark your drive(s).
 
daugirdas said:
I doubt it is related to USB3 in any way, but rather the card or card controller itself. Mine is bought from the same place btw.

I'll have a good play with my 600x 'sports' card tonight or over the weekend. It performed really well in my bodies, and over usb2 the transfers used to be very quick. I haven't tried plugging in the 1d3 (usb2) directly to my mini yet.
On the other hand that 400x card felt surprisingly slow when shooting bursts in my 1Ds2, definitely slower than 4GB 300x I used before. I'll probably raise a warranty claim on these grounds alone.

Are there any good mac apps for drive speed benchmarking and plotting ideally? There are a few things I need to measure.
Click to expand...

hmm im not sure exactly, im using a pc and if i remember rightly the copying window on a mac doesn't tell you the MB/s :S

ive done a quick test and it takes 9.9 seconds on average (out of 3 tests) for my 7d to unload its buffer of 22 images after a continuous burst (note it will be dumping some files as the bust goes on (i think)) until it stops and goes too double bursts. In my opinion this isnt bad tbh, its about the same as my 500d which has a buffer of 7!

random fact: it takes 5.1 seconds for the 7d to fill its buffer at 8fps
 
PJ S said:
Bingo - laptop. 5400rpm drive by any chance?
It also might be the USB chip used is optimised better for USB2 rather than USB3.
Click to expand...

yea but video files transfer from 70-120MB/s about the right speed for USB 3.0?
 
Last edited:
PJ S said:
Are you using a different USB reader for the USB2 results?
Is the USB input you're connecting to on the PC USB3 compliant?

From the video transfer speed, I'd say it's more to do with your hard drive's random write speed during the photo transfers. The video file is probably filling the drive's buffer, allowing for a higher sustained throughput.

I could be wrong, but it's something you'd need to test over and over, to see if the numbers are similar each time.
Maybe, but it's a bit of a stretch, defragmenting the drive will leave a larger contiguous free space.
Click to expand...

this could be right, I've only got 17gb left on my laptop drive (some cleaning up to do i think), defragmenting could be an option but I tend to do that a lot as it improves Lightroom picture loading times as I have a lot of photos on here (about 200GB and the internal drive is a 500gb toshiba drive 7,200rpm) and no im using a usb 3.0 card reader in both ports to test both USB 2.0 and 3.0
 
N01Chris said:
this could be right, I've only got 17gb left on my laptop drive (some cleaning up to do i think), defragmenting could be an option but I tend to do that a lot as it improves Lightroom picture loading times as I have a lot of photos on here (about 200GB and the internal drive is a 500gb toshiba drive 7,200rpm) and no im using a usb 3.0 card reader in both ports to test both USB 2.0 and 3.0
Click to expand...

17gb (<10%) free space is a big no no. Think about a wheel and the diameters at the centre and periphery. Guess where you have space left, and how fast will it go. I've been there with my old mbp and it was pretty dreadful in the end. I've got 500gb 5400rpm (with 300gb free) basic drive in it now, and it is like a new machine. If I get this right 1GB 5400rpm will have higher read/write speeds than fullish 7200rpm. I'd suggest putting in a new drive.

You could obviously use an external drive for any copying tests for now.
 
N01Chris said:
this could be right, I've only got 17gb left on my laptop drive (some cleaning up to do i think), defragmenting could be an option but I tend to do that a lot as it improves Lightroom picture loading times as I have a lot of photos on here (about 200GB and the internal drive is a 500gb toshiba drive 7,200rpm) and no im using a usb 3.0 card reader in both ports to test both USB 2.0 and 3.0
Click to expand...

Get the data on there backed up ASAveryP - as above, less than 10% (15% minimum really) can result in corrupt files. Not just images or music, but OS, Applications, etc.
So, what's junk, get it off pronto.
What's irreplaceable, get it backed up onto an external drive or Cloud account.
When that's done, defrag the drive at that point.

I'd even suggest going for a RAID set up, with a pair of mirrored drives (RAID 1).

As for the same reader on both ports - I think it's more an optimisation thing than the SD card.
Only way to see if it is, would be to put the same reader on the same laptop and a different brand or Macbook.
If it all played out the same, then it's the reader not optimised for USB3.
There's so many variables, it'd take you to try a number of permutations to figure out a pattern which indicated what was the root cause - at the moment, it's educated conjecture.
 
Last edited:
daugirdas said:
17gb (<10%) free space is a big no no. Think about a wheel and the diameters at the centre and periphery. Guess where you have space left, and how fast will it go. I've been there with my old mbp and it was pretty dreadful in the end. I've got 500gb 5400rpm (with 300gb free) basic drive in it now, and it is like a new machine. If I get this right 1GB 5400rpm will have higher read/write speeds than fullish 7200rpm. I'd suggest putting in a new drive.

You could obviously use an external drive for any copying tests for now.
Click to expand...

I think your right, I've either got too do some serious cleaning up or invest in a new drive, anyhow I think it might be worth getting a new internal one maybe a 1tb drive and buying an USB 3.0 External enclosure for the one presently in my system and using that to back up my images (or just keeping the images on there but that would defeat the object of getting a 1tb hdd) one problem though, is it possible to clone a HDD so i dont have to transfer all my stuff? otherwise im gunna have to source another drive or somehow :/
 
PJ S said:
Get the data on there backed up ASAveryP - as above, less than 10% (15% minimum really) can result in corrupt files. Not just images or music, but OS, Applications, etc.
So, what's junk, get it off pronto.
What's irreplaceable, get it backed up onto an external drive or Cloud account.
When that's done, defrag the drive at that point.

I'd even suggest going for a RAID set up, with a pair of mirrored drives (RAID 1).
Click to expand...

raid would be great but I only have laptops :/ I have steam and I hardly go on that anymore so ill un-install all my games and Ill try and delete as much unnecessary stuff as possible but i think it would be best to get a new hdd
 
N01Chris said:
I think your right, I've either got too do some serious cleaning up or invest in a new drive, anyhow I think it might be worth getting a new internal one maybe a 1tb drive and buying an USB 3.0 External enclosure for the one presently in my system and using that to back up my images (or just keeping the images on there but that would defeat the object of getting a 1tb hdd) one problem though, is it possible to clone a HDD so i dont have to transfer all my stuff? otherwise im gunna have to source another drive or somehow :/
Click to expand...

macs make cloning and migrating surprisingly easy - saved me days if not weeks, windows not so much...

Well, if you get both drives connected, boot from linux cd and type in the good old dd into the command line (there is a bit more to it than that...)
 
daugirdas said:
macs make cloning and migrating surprisingly easy - saved me days if not weeks, windows not so much...

Well, if you get both drives connected, boot from linux cd and type in the good old dd into the command line (there is a bit more to it than that...)
Click to expand...

hmm sounds a bit weird but im quite familiar with linux infact i have ubuntu installed now, would it work with running linx alongside windows though (the one where you install ubuntu through windows(thats what i have now))?

Ive been looking at some hdd brands and some give you cloneing software but it seems this is only with ssd's :( but im not totally sure i might work with hdd probibly
 
Last edited:
N01Chris said:
hmm sounds a bit weird but im quite familiar with linux infact i have ubuntu installed now, would it work with running linx alongside windows though (the one where you install ubuntu through windows(thats what i have now))?

Ive been looking at some manefactures and some give you cloneing software but it seems this is only with ssd's :( but im not totally sure i might work with hdd probibly
Click to expand...

I wouldn't want to run any OS from the drive that is being cloned. Burning and booting a cd will not take that long. I certainly wouldn't be spending money on some commercial pretty looking software just for that.
 
daugirdas said:
I wouldn't want to run any OS from the drive that is being cloned. Burning and booting a cd will not take that long. I certainly wouldn't be spending money on some commercial pretty looking software just for that.
Click to expand...

I'll look into it then, its gunna be some while before I can get a new hdd ayways but then how is this one? :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Dig...1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1357848568&sr=1-1

also had a brainwave, surely if I install a fresh install of win 7 on a new hdd and use the old hdd with a usb enclosure ill be able to copy my files back (ive done a clean install before so i have all my laptop drivers downloaded already)

please excuse me if this is offensive to anyone but ill go on anyways:

I did not get a install dvd with my laptop so after I installed the beta of win 8 and released how rubbish it is I wanted to go back to win 7, my only options were to buy win 7, haggle with HP to send me the install cd or download the installer from Pirate bay and write it to a cd and install (using the key on the bottom of my laptop) In my mind this isn't illegal as its my key and technically ive paid for it (am i right?) so I did the latter, and too my supprise everything was a lot smoother and faster (without the bloatware) although I do remember that my laptop did have bluetooth but that doesn't appear to work anymore :shrug: but thats another issue

would this be better than cloning my drive?
 
Last edited:
N01Chris said:
I'll look into it then, its gunna be some while before I can get a new hdd ayways but then how is this one? :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Dig...1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1357847332&sr=1-1

also had a brainwave, surely if I install a fresh install of win 7 on a new hdd and use the old hdd with a usb enclosure ill be able to copy my files back (ive done a clean install before so i have all my laptop drivers downloaded already)

please excuse me if this is offensive to anyone but ill go on anyways:

I did not get a install dvd with my laptop so after I installed the beta of win 8 and released how rubbish it is I wanted to go back to win 7, my only options were to buy win 7, haggle with HP to send me the install cd or download the installer from Pirate bay and write it to a cd and install (using the key on the bottom of my laptop) In my mind this isn't illegal as its my key and technically ive paid for it (am i right?) so I did the latter, and too my supprise everything was a lot smoother although I do remember that my laptop did have bluetooth but that doesn't appear to work anymore :shrug: but thats another issue

would this be better than cloning my drive?
Click to expand...

reinstall is always better than cloning. You will have cleaner and faster system in the end, but may take you a lot longer depending how much software and settings you had.

I believe there is usually a small partition of the drive that contains the equivalent of DVD for reinstalling the OS. That was the case when I bought a HP laptop for my mum. It is a bit nasty if HDD goes bad though, and I do agree with your concerns.
 
ive managed too free up quite a lot of space ^_^ ive got 160GB free now thats 32% free much higher that 15% minimum

is it still worth getting a new hdd?
 
daugirdas said:
reinstall is always better than cloning. You will have cleaner and faster system in the end, but may take you a lot longer depending how much software and settings you had.

I believe there is usually a small partition of the drive that contains the equivalent of DVD for reinstalling the OS. That was the case when I bought a HP laptop for my mum. It is a bit nasty if HDD goes bad though, and I do agree with your concerns.
Click to expand...

yea that was my original plan to use the boot to recovery mode hp has in the seprate partion but installing the win 8 pre-release seemed to make that not work so i had to resort to re-installing windows from a disk

windows files aren't encrypted are they? as in if i were to plug in my existing hdd and transfer say all my photos to the new hdd with the clean install would that be possible?
 
N01Chris said:
ive managed too free up quite a lot of space ^_^ ive got 160GB free now thats 32% free much higher that 15% minimum

is it still worth getting a new hdd?
Click to expand...

no idea, but does it affect your work? Would you wait for 2TB drive or an SSD?
 
daugirdas said:
no idea, but does it affect your work? Would you wait for 2TB drive or an SSD?
Click to expand...

hmm ive gotten rid of quite a bit of movies ive gotten (I can re-download the ones ive already bought) but It would be better to not have to do that, maybe it would be better getting a 500gb hybrid drive and then i could fully back up my hdd or a ssd and have all my files in usb 3.0 enclosure, Im not totally sure, Ill have to think about it.

also i'd like to point out that I don't do photography professionally so I don't really need to back up everything like crazy :) but it would be nice to have enough space to have all my stuff and not having to choose what is essential to keep
 
When I said RAID, I was talking of an external enclosure, as I knew you'd a laptop.
Depending on funds and age of hardware, you could opt for an enclosure only, and populate it with your own drives, one of which could be the laptop one, if you opted for say a Samsung 830 SSD (128/256GB).
That'd make the laptop fly but with reduced space to store stuff permanently.
Still, that's what the external drive(s) would be for, and you can transfer films/music across whenever required.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004VDR5JQ/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00A3KB880/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005DRAHVW/ - there are other 3.5" designs for much less
 
PJ S said:
When I said RAID, I was talking of an external enclosure, as I knew you'd a laptop.
Depending on funds and age of hardware, you could opt for an enclosure only, and populate it with your own drives, one of which could be the laptop one, if you opted for say a Samsung 830 SSD (128/256GB).
That'd make the laptop fly but with reduced space to store stuff permanently.
Still, that's what the external drive(s) would be for, and you can transfer films/music across whenever required.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004VDR5JQ/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00A3KB880/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005DRAHVW/ - there are other 3.5" designs for much less
Click to expand...

thanks, i'd never think of that, obviously id want a usb 3.0 one but it depends on funds i guess :(
 
PJ S said:
When I said RAID, I was talking of an external enclosure, as I knew you'd a laptop.
Depending on funds and age of hardware, you could opt for an enclosure only, and populate it with your own drives, one of which could be the laptop one, if you opted for say a Samsung 830 SSD (128/256GB).
That'd make the laptop fly but with reduced space to store stuff permanently.
Still, that's what the external drive(s) would be for, and you can transfer films/music across whenever required.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004VDR5JQ/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00A3KB880/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005DRAHVW/ - there are other 3.5" designs for much less
Click to expand...

on second thought, raid might be a bit of a overkill, i just do photography for fun, i think the best think i could do is get a large hdd to store all my photos
 
RAID is redundancy in mirror mode, not speed or capacity.
You're spending a bit extra to minimise your risk of losing all if a drive should kick the bucket.
Many people have no problems, many only have no problems until the drive fails and then panic about how they're going to retrieve treasured memories.
Storage is still cheap, if you look at the cost over the length of time it'll be used - many years.
 
Back to the original problem with that CF.

I did some tests with Blackmagic disk speed test on my mac mini with USB 3.0 and the Transcend 3.0 reader moving 1GB data chunks. Here are the results in MB/s:

USB3 4gb CF 300x 24 / 39 Duracel
USB3 16GB SD 36 / 40 Sandisk
USB3 8GB CF 600x 60 / 72 transcend
USB3 32GB CF 400x 30 / 8 transcend

Everything seems very good, and that SD Sandisk Extreme is very impressive. But just look at that 32GB Transcend. The read speed is awful. It is going back as we speak.
There is nothing wrong with my reader though

edit: is it best to contact Amazon or Transcend for replacement or returns?
 
Last edited:
PJ S said:
RAID is redundancy in mirror mode, not speed or capacity.
You're spending a bit extra to minimise your risk of losing all if a drive should kick the bucket.
Many people have no problems, many only have no problems until the drive fails and then panic about how they're going to retrieve treasured memories.
Storage is still cheap, if you look at the cost over the length of time it'll be used - many years.
Click to expand...

But don't rely on the raid as your only copy. You still need a backup.
 
Your backup is the second mirrored drive.
Yes, in absolute terms, you should have a backup of a backup, stored in a fireproof safe, off site.
And that's not even getting into whether it's another drive or tape, or even Blu-Ray discs.
That level of paranoia is best reserved for the commercial sector, along with cost of implementation.

Fortunately, we're not safeguarding national secrets or suchlike, so for all but the unfortunate few, a mirrored RAID setup will provide plenty of security for their files, with a 3-drive RAID5 setup offering a bit more peace of mind.
 
daugirdas said:
is it best to contact Amazon or Transcend for replacement or returns?
Click to expand...

You bought from Amazon, that's who your contract is with.
If you feel this is a rogue card from Transcend, they might be interested in facilitating a swap, so they can test it and see why it's performing so poorly.
Your replacement if it did the same, could be returned to Amazon for a refund or exchange to another brand.
 
PJ S said:
Your backup is the second mirrored drive.
Yes, in absolute terms, you should have a backup of a backup, stored in a fireproof safe, off site.
And that's not even getting into whether it's another drive or tape, or even Blu-Ray discs.
That level of paranoia is best reserved for the commercial sector, along with cost of implementation.

Fortunately, we're not safeguarding national secrets or suchlike, so for all but the unfortunate few, a mirrored RAID setup will provide plenty of security for their files, with a 3-drive RAID5 setup offering a bit more peace of mind.
Click to expand...

no.

raid mirroring should not be thought of as 2 copies of your data. its a 24/7redundancy option when a disk fails, that is all.

any level of raid will not protect against - deletion, corruption and some types of hardware failure. it's essentially 1 big data disk vunerable to the same types of data loss.

EVERYONE even home users these days should have at least 2 copies of their data. ideally with one of those in a drawer at work/friends/family in case of fire/theft/flood etc. i guess it depends how much you value your irreplacable data i suppose.
 
Neil, I agree, but when you balance that against the number of people who've no redundancy in place whatsoever, and who've never had the drive go south on them, your proposition is too extreme.

For most domestic users cataloguing their photos/film/music, an external drive(s) is better than nothing, which is where our OP is, and having forgotten/never knew the golden rule about hard drive minimum free space retention.

Like everything in life, you can spend as much or as little as you like - it's for the end user to justify and live with the decision.
So whilst you're spot on, it's better to have everybody doing the bare minimum, before advocating going the whole hog.
 
PJ S said:
When I said RAID, I was talking of an external enclosure, as I knew you'd a laptop.
Depending on funds and age of hardware, you could opt for an enclosure only, and populate it with your own drives, one of which could be the laptop one, if you opted for say a Samsung 830 SSD (128/256GB).
That'd make the laptop fly but with reduced space to store stuff permanently.
Still, that's what the external drive(s) would be for, and you can transfer films/music across whenever required.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004VDR5JQ/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00A3KB880/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005DRAHVW/ - there are other 3.5" designs for much less
Click to expand...

Yep - thats exactly what I'd advise doing too... pointless getting the 128 though - get the 256gb SSD & buy an external caddy for your other (older) drives.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top