USB 3.0 Noob WD My Book 3.0

[UNDCTIATC]

Greetings!
I recently purchased a Western Digital My Book 3.0 external HDD. It was advertised as a usb 3.0 compliant drive capable of 3.0 Gb/s speeds. However, I am only able to get 100Mb/s out of it.
It is plugged into a 3.0 Usb compliant port on a Asus P7P55D Pro with 3.0 support. The drivers are up to date.
This may answer my own question or not...The fixed HDD is a WD Caviar Black HDD in Sata 3Gb/s. Would this make the transfer speeds slow? But I still wonder why if both of them are capable of 3Gb/s speed why is it a significantly low % of the capabilities? The USB 3.0 support is enabled too.
Any insight, most appreciated

 

[Deleted member 3]

Assuming you meant 100MB/s that's normal, the drive inside it won't get any faster.

 

[UNDCTIATC]

yeah i meant 100 megabytes per second. How come it goes so slow? is it because of the cache of the hdd or the cpu?

 

[UNDCTIATC]

anyone have any other thoughts?

 

[Hockster]

That's about as fast as conventional 7200 RPM drives will go.

 

[Phxprovost]

yeah i meant 100 megabytes per second. How come it goes so slow? is it because of the cache of the hdd or the cpu?

100MB/s is hardly slow

 

[DonInKansas]

Run it in USB 2.0 and see what you get. If the performance numbers are about triple in 3.0, then you're on par.

 

[TheGuruStud]

That's as fast as the drive goes. It's not a black drive.

 

[UNDCTIATC]

That's as fast as the drive goes. It's not a black drive.

Its not a black drive? But thats what the model is unless you are talking aboot something else.

 

[TheGuruStud]

Its not a black drive? But thats what the model is unless you are talking aboot something else.

They actually put a black drive in an enclosure? That's a first.

What benchmark are you using?

 

[95Viper]

That's as fast as the drive goes. It's not a black drive.

They actually put a black drive in an enclosure? That's a first.

What benchmark are you using?

Yep, it is a first and it is the new caviar black model with 64MB cache.

Anyway, back to the OP's question, yep looks like that is the results you should be seeing.

Look here: notebookreview.com and computerpoweruser.com.

 

[UNDCTIATC]

ok everyone says that is what i should expect...but WHY? WTF is the point of a 3Gb/s SATA drive if it only goes 100MB/s?

 

[Phxprovost]

ok everyone says that is what i should expect...but WHY? WTF is the point of a 3Gb/s SATA drive if it only goes 100MB/s?

3gb/s is roughly what......like ~375MB/s? I think and your getting 100MB/s out of a mechanical drive? i really dont see what your complaining about the 3gb/s is the maximum sustainable speed of the bus....not the hdd your running on it

 

[Hockster]

ok everyone says that is what i should expect...but WHY? WTF is the point of a 3Gb/s SATA drive if it only goes 100MB/s?

Marketing....

 

[xvi]

The hard drive in your external enclosure can only go 100MB/s (which is actually quite good as hard drives go). The reason why it's good to have USB 3.0 is because USB 2.0 will peak out at about 35-40 MB/s. Because USB 2.0 was so slow (relatively), it was often the bottleneck for performance for an external hard drive. Using USB 3.0 allows much faster transfers, but the new bottleneck is now the speed of your drive.

It's sort of like putting tires rated for 200 MPH on your car when the motor can only get you going 90. It gives you the potential to go fast, but not the ability. It's sort of like a standard broadband internet connection. Your local network may be connected at 100 Mbps, but your Cable/DSL modem can only go 1 Mbps.

The speed at which you can transfer something depends on the slowest link. For example:

Instead of..
Your Computer <--USB 2.0 (~40MB/s)--> Your External Drive (100 MB/s)
..you now have..
Your Computer <--USB 3.0 (~500MB/s)--> Your External Drive (100 MB/s)

Long story short, you've gotten rid of one bottleneck and have caught up to a different bottleneck.

 

[Deleted member 3]

Marketing....

This has nothing to do with marketing, the bus is capable of those speeds, the device on the bus simply isn't.

 

[Hockster]

Well the manufacturers know full well their drives can't use the full allotment, but hype it anyway.

 

[sweeper]

My USB HDD is now in my PC and it is a BLACK Edition as well. Supports (up to 3MB's) if you read the fine print. I use it as my primary HDD now (Took it out of the External USB enclosure) and seems to run fine but Windows continues to show it as the slow point of my PC at a rating of 5.7 lol .

 

[Deleted member 3]

Well the manufacturers know full well their drives can't use the full allotment, but hype it anyway.

That is of course poo. They don't hype anything, they say it connects using the SATA2 standard, which it does. When reading from the disks cache it can actually transfer at the SATA2 speeds.
Any interface in a PC has a certain bandwidth, this doesn't mean every device has to fully use it. Hell, your 33K6/56K modem used to be connected to a 112K serial port, marketing scam I tell you.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Would it be faster with one of these in it?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-336-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279

 

[Pinchy]

As mentioned in a few other posts, USB 3.0 is capable of transferring at 3.0Gb/s however, the hard drive is not capable of that speed.

Even on current USB 2.0 devices (like flash drives) they don't all transfer at 60MB/s just because USB 2.0 is capable of it (480mb)...some older drives transfer at 5-10MB/s, just because the drive is slow.

If a USB2.0 device that ran at 20MB/s was converted into USB 3.0, it would still run at 20MB/s as that is the speed that certain device runs at.

 

[sweeper]

Just get 2 drives... RAID and you'll see a difference ... best way for HDD speed IMO.

 

[95Viper]

Would it be faster with one of these in it?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-336-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279

Probably, yes, because it is a Sata III drive. Which has a theoretical transfer rate of 6Gb/s. But, see answer to OP...

As mentioned in a few other posts, USB 3.0 is capable of transferring at 3.0Gb/s however, the hard drive is not capable of that speed.

Even on current USB 2.0 devices (like flash drives) they don't all transfer at 60MB/s just because USB 2.0 is capable of it (480mb)...some older drives transfer at 5-10MB/s, just because the drive is slow.

If a USB2.0 device that ran at 20MB/s was converted into USB 3.0, it would still run at 20MB/s as that is the speed that certain device runs at.

Wrong, USB 3.0 has a theoretical transfer rate of 4.8Gpbs.
You can brush up on it here: SuperSpeed USB 3.0 FAQ

@OP> The problem you are having is two-fold; (1.) The drive WD placed in the my Book 3.0 is a WD Caviar Black 1 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, WD1001FAES. Which is a SATA II drive and (2.) more than likely (I could be wrong, as I have not been able to find which one they used and I don't have access to one to pull apart to see), the Controller is a USB 3.0 to SATA II controller and not, a USB 3.0 to SATA III. As, there is a controller in the enclosure to connect the SATA drive to USB. If, by chance they did use a SATA III controller and you put a SATA III drive in it, you should see an increase in you speeds.

You would see an even greater increase in speed, with an SSD drive, as it has no mechanical parts and a lower latency. Spinning platters and moving heads having to search for write space and looking for data when called, this is the crutch to mechanical drives compared to SSD and the new flash drives.

You can decode your drive here:WD Model Number codes

You are getting all you are going to get out of that My Book the way they designed it.

Check this test over at XtremeSystems Forums.

Hope this helps, as I am not very good at explaining things, sometimes.

 

[UNDCTIATC]

Hmm well thats poo...I bought it because they flashed that you could transfer blue rays in a few minutes...should sue for false advertising to the HDD illiterate

 

[Pinchy]

Wrong, USB 3.0 has a theoretical transfer rate of 4.8Gpbs.
You can brush up on it here: SuperSpeed USB 3.0 FAQ

Yeah USB 3.0 has that hypothetical speed, but his drive is capped at 3.0Gbit as he has a SATA II drive/controller (Refer to the OP). I should have worded my post better, however.

@OP> The problem you are having is two-fold; (1.) The drive WD placed in the my Book 3.0 is a WD Caviar Black 1 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, WD1001FAES. Which is a SATA II drive and (2.) more than likely (I could be wrong, as I have not been able to find which one they used and I don't have access to one to pull apart to see), the Controller is a USB 3.0 to SATA II controller and not, a USB 3.0 to SATA III. As, there is a controller in the enclosure to connect the SATA drive to USB. If, by chance they did use a SATA III controller and you put a SATA III drive in it, you should see an increase in you speeds.

That isn't the case. If both the HDD was SATA III and the controller was SATA III it would still operate at the same speeds it is now, even though the new hypothetical speed would be 4.8Gbit. SATA III is only the interface; if the drive isn't maxxing out the current interface (SATA II, and it isn't as no current HDD runs at 375MB/s) it won't benefit from SATA III at all. The reason USB 3.0 is taken advantage of is because drives were maxxing out USB 2.0 (60MB/s) and therefore while it doesn't operate at the full 4.8GBit (600MB/s) it still utilises part of it.

That is why it would be stupid of WD to put a SATA III drive and/or controller into an enclosure...it would just be wasting their money.