External HDD write speeds slower than Windows?

sysrez · 09-30-2010, 04:31 AM

When I copy files to my External NTFS HDD using Ubuntu the write speeds are about 10-12 MB/sec, but when I copy files using Windows the write speeds are about 25-30 MB/sec.

Exact same files, tried all three ports on my netbook and even timed it to see if the speeds are by any chance miscalculated by either operating system and Ubuntu is definitely writing at half the speed.

So what could be the problem? When I had Windows on this Netbook I never got had a problem with write speeds so I don't think it is a hardware issue.

serafean · 09-30-2010, 09:26 AM

Hi, this is (perfectly) normal : NTFS support under Linux isn't very good. It's done using the ntfs-3g driver, which runs in userspace using the FUSE feature of linux (already some overhead there). Add to that a not completely optimized FS driver, and you get slow speeds. Sorry, ntfs support under Linux at least exists now though...

If I'm wrong, please anyone correct me, this was just my explanation when seeing my CPU usage spike while writing to NTFS.

Serafean