USB connection extremely slow [ Edited ]

[ExOblivione]

I have a nook WiFi, and have noticed that transferring any data over USB to the nook is extremely slow. Transferring a lot of books or audio files takes ages as I am getting an average speed fo around 1.5MBps (+/- 0.2).  I am using the bundled cable to connect the device to my motherboard's USB 2.0 port (not using a USB hub).

I tried transferring a file to a generic SanDisk USB thumb drive, and the transfer speeds were 50MBps+ i.e. approaching the theoretical max speed of a USB2 connection. The speeds the nook is getting are those of USB 1.0 (12Mbits).

Is this the speed everyone sees on the nook? A device this new can't possibly be USB 1.0. If this is a problem with my device, is there anything I can do to resolve it?


Some relevant info:

 - The nook is the only storage device on the controller, so I am not saturating the bandwidth by transferring to multiple devices. The only other devices on that USB controller are my mouse and keyboard, and UPS.

 - Just to be sure, I have tried connection the nook to the USB 3.0 controller on my board, getting the same speeds.

 - I have tried the nook on 3 different computers, getting the same speeds.

 - I have no SD card installed.

 - Using Windows 7 Ultimate, with all latest drivers installed.

 - Firmware 1.5 installed. Speeds were the same on FW 1.4 too.

 - WiFi is off.

[ExOblivione]

Anyone?

Anyone?

Could someone at least tell me what speeds they get transferring files to their nook over USB, so I can know if my problem is actually a problem or a limitation of the device itself?

[Ed_Mart]

Transfer speeds should be much faster than you are getting.  The problem could be the cable, if you have another Micro USB cable (from a camera or cell phone) try that first.

[donc13]

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ExOblivione wrote:

I have a nook WiFi, and have noticed that transferring any data over USB to the nook is extremely slow. Transferring a lot of books or audio files takes ages as I am getting an average speed fo around 1.5MBps (+/- 0.2).  I am using the bundled cable to connect the device to my motherboard's USB 2.0 port (not using a USB hub).

I tried transferring a file to a generic SanDisk USB thumb drive, and the transfer speeds were 50MBps+ i.e. approaching the theoretical max speed of a USB2 connection. The speeds the nook is getting are those of USB 1.0 (12Mbits).

Is this the speed everyone sees on the nook? A device this new can't possibly be USB 1.0. If this is a problem with my device, is there anything I can do to resolve it?


Some relevant info:

 - The nook is the only storage device on the controller, so I am not saturating the bandwidth by transferring to multiple devices. The only other devices on that USB controller are my mouse and keyboard, and UPS.

 - Just to be sure, I have tried connection the nook to the USB 3.0 controller on my board, getting the same speeds.

 - I have tried the nook on 3 different computers, getting the same speeds.

 - I have no SD card installed.

 - Using Windows 7 Ultimate, with all latest drivers installed.

 - Firmware 1.5 installed. Speeds were the same on FW 1.4 too.

 - WiFi is off.

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Are you transfering to an added microSD chip?   If so, what is the quality of the chip?

[ExOblivione]

^ Nope. I mentioned this in my original post:

"

...

- I have no SD card installed.

...

"

I don't have another microUSB cable. All my other devices use miniUSB, unfortunately. Will have to ask around.

[donc13]

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ExOblivione wrote:

^ Nope. I mentioned this in my original post:

"

...

- I have no SD card installed.

...

"

I don't have another microUSB cable. All my other devices use miniUSB, unfortunately. Will have to ask around.

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Radio Shack sells a mini-micro USB adapter for about $5.   I use this with several devices, including the nook and NOOKcolor.

[icebike]

Where did you get USB 3.0 already? I haden't realized it was being shipped yet.

Anyway see if this helps:

1. Open "My Computer" or "Computer" from your (Start) Menu or Button.
2. Right-click the external Hard disk drive from the list and select "properties"
3. Click the "Hardware" tab.
4. Highlight the drive your having problems with (the Nook) from the drive list and click on "Properties".
5. Click on the “Policies” tab.
6. You will see two radio buttons - "Optimize for quick removal" and "optimize for performance".
7. If not selected, select "Optimize for performance" and click on "OK".
8. If running Vista or Windows 7 also check "enable write caching on the disk".   Click on "OK" and exit.

Doing a REAL Eject becomes much more important with these settings.  Don't be doing Safely remove from the tray icon.

There is a register setting somewhere which does the same thing, but this is the safe way.

[ExOblivione]

USB 3.0 enabled motherboards have been available for at least 1 year. Mine is the ASUS X58 Sabertooth, with three USB 3.0 ports on the board. There is no southbridge chip that has it built in yet, first one to do so will be Sandy Bridge in January 2011. Current boards that offer that use NEC chips to enable USB 3.0, which is pretty good. There are already USB 3.0  external HDDs starting to appear too.

Anyway, write caching is already enabled for all drives. Not that it would make any difference in this case. Write caching would only effect drives with buffers, which USB sticks don't have (and I assume nook doesn't either). Plus copying from the nook is also equally slow.

I don't live in the US, so I will have to search around to see where I can get a decent cable.

[icebike]

Read my suggestions again.  Writecaching was just an afterthought.  You missed the main point of the policy change:  Point #6.

There is nothing wrong with your cable.

Write caching has nothing to do with drives having buffers.  It tells windows to accept all data destined for the drive and tell the calling program (windows explorer in this case) that the write has finished, and then windows continues to process the actual write in the background.

Lets your program finish faster, even tho the data is still in transit.

[ExOblivione]

The "Better Performance" option simply enables write caching. I won't effect reads.

[icebike]

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ExOblivione wrote:

The "Better Performance" option simply enables write caching. I won't effect reads.

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Wrong.  But hey, its your nook. Do as you wish.

[ExOblivione]

Really? Then please tell me what else it does? Windows own description given below:

[icebike]

That is the description given as a thumb nail.  Its not expected to be complete.

In quick removal mode windows writes a buffer full, closes the file, adjusts the fat table, then re-opens and writes the next buffer to the file.  This is to protect against idiots who yank drives out of sockets before things are done.  Its slower than hell.

In performance mode they treat it more like a disk drive, start one continuous write operation as fast as the device can accept data.  It made a huge performance difference for external USB and Firewire hard drives and this solution was what was recommend to me by Microsoft engineers on one of their tech support sites.

Just be aware you have to Eject instead of safely remove.  But the write operations happen so fast with performance mode that it is hard to get your fingers off the mouse and jerk the cord fast enough to cause any real damage.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2010/01/05/speed-up-and-optimize-usb-drive-speed-performance-by-enabli...

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/XPrem-devs.mspx

You could have tried it out in the amount of time you've spent arguing with me. 

[ExOblivione]

I don't disagree with what you said in the last post, which is what I was saying, that "Better Performance" option turns on write caching. However:

I don't disagree with what you said in the last post, which is what I was saying, that "Better Performance" option turns on write caching. However:

1. It should make no difference to reading from the device.

2. As I already mentioned in my reply to your suggestion to switch to "Better Performance", "Anyway, write caching is already enabled for all drives." - hence Better Performance already set

[DragonRich]

I understand from your posting that you are not using a microSD card, but this might be relevant anyways.  Also, I appologize, but I have not been able to locate the references for this information. 

For the add in microSD card, I have read that it only reads and writes the card as a class 2 microSD card - which means that the maximum speed would be 2 MB/s.  This sounds in line with your results.

The eariler versions of the Nook used a microSD card for the RAM as well, and I thought I had seen a website report that replacing this card with on above class 2 fails to read the card.

Hope this helps.

[icebike]

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DragonRich wrote:

For the add in microSD card, I have read that it only reads and writes the card as a class 2 microSD card - which means that the maximum speed would be 2 MB/s.  This sounds in line with your results.

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You read wrong.  

From the users guide, page: 166, Class 2, 4, and 6 are all supported.

[ExOblivione]

Could you please clarify a couple of point about what you said?

When you say "earlier versions", does that mean a hardware revision took place? I got my nook early July of this year. The device box doesn't mention a manufacture date though, so no way to know when it was made.

When you say that earlier versions used "a microSD card for RAM", does that mean that they used the card the user installed for RAM (which doesn't apply to me), or that nook itself has an internal SD card? Your statement saying that the card was replacable seems to imply the former.

[ProfReader]

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ExOblivione wrote:

Could you please clarify a couple of point about what you said?

When you say "earlier versions", does that mean a hardware revision took place? I got my nook early July of this year. The device box doesn't mention a manufacture date though, so no way to know when it was made.

When you say that earlier versions used "a microSD card for RAM", does that mean that they used the card the user installed for RAM (which doesn't apply to me), or that nook itself has an internal SD card? Your statement saying that the card was replacable seems to imply the former.

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Yes the newer versions eliminated the SD card that the firmware is stored on in the earlier models.

[ExOblivione]

I guess my nook is the older version, given that it was purchased in July. Does the nook use the card for primary storage as well as firmware? If it's just the firmware, then that should impact write speed to its main storage.

I have also not read of other complaints about slow transfer speed, which should have been numerous if all older nooks were this slow.

[Grizz96ny]

As we speek I am transfering an MP4 vid (700MB) to a sandisk 32GB card. Card is basically empty. Running Windows Ultimate on a Core i7 with 16GB on the motherboard.

Transfer rate on USB3 is 136kb/second.