USB Removable Media copying VERY SLOW

stardotstar · 02-28-2005, 05:31 AM

Hi all, I am using Ubuntu on a Latitude notebook and just noticed that copying a 23mb zip archive to the USB removable media that detects and browses fine is very slow - ie under windows when I have copied this sort of size the copy finishes much faster.

Any ideas why this would be - is there a mode or option that sets the data transfer rate. I have downloaded some 20 images off a digital camera, zipped them up and copied them to the USB to send to another member of the organisation.

In the past I would spend half my day in Windows doing Lotus Notes/MS-Office and Digital Camera stuff and now that I have Lotus running under WINE and OpenOffice is so good I am basically 99% free of Windows at work - this is great

Anyway I just thought that someone might know why this transfer might be so slow...

Will.*

BTW it is a USB v1 usb hub - though I don't know all the stats on it - or the exact capacity of the stick.

satinet · 02-28-2005, 06:03 AM

hello,

It sounds like the usb 1.0 hub is causing the problem.

If you type

lspci -v what do you get pertaining to the USB hub?

Also do lsmod and see whether there is a module for ohci or ehci, or something like that - can't remember the exact name.

Sounds like it's running at usb2 in wondoze and 1.1 in linux..........

theYinYeti · 02-28-2005, 08:09 AM

Another cause could be supermount. I've seen much slower data rate with supermount enabled, than with manual mount/umount.

Yves.

stardotstar · 02-28-2005, 03:51 PM

lspci -v yields:

Code:

0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 02) (prog -if 00 [UHCI])
        Subsystem: Intel Corp. Latitude C640
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at bf80 [size=32]

lsmod yields this that may be what you are refering to:
usbcore 104292 3 uhci_hcd

I do not know how to check for supermount.

here is syslog

Code:

Mar  1 08:11:16 localhost kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
Mar  1 08:11:16 localhost kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
Mar  1 08:11:17 localhost kernel: SCSI device sda: 128001 512-byte hdwr sectors (66 MB)
Mar  1 08:11:17 localhost kernel: sda: Write Protect is off
Mar  1 08:11:17 localhost kernel: sda: Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
Mar  1 08:11:17 localhost kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
Mar  1 08:11:17 localhost kernel:  /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: unknown partition table
Mar  1 08:11:17 localhost kernel: Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0,  lun 0
Mar  1 08:11:17 localhost udev[5640]: configured rule in '/etc/udev/rules.d/udev.rules' at li ne 28 applied, 'sda' becomes '%k'
Mar  1 08:11:17 localhost udev[5640]: creating device node '/dev/sda'

Any further ideas on this data would be appreciated.

*.

satinet · 03-02-2005, 11:50 AM

Hmm,

I see what you are saying. It appears that the system things your USB hub is rather slower than it should really be....

I have a similar problem in that my front USB hub is running at 1.1 speed but it actually works at 2.0 speed in windoze....

here's my lspic -v:

Code:

00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4) (prog
-if 10 [OHCI])
        Subsystem: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0c11
        Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
        Memory at e4002000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4) (prog
-if 10 [OHCI])
        Subsystem: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0c11
        Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
        Memory at e4003000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4) (prog
-if 20 [EHCI])
        Subsystem: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0c11
        Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 20
        Memory at e4004000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
        Capabilities: [44] #0a [2080]
        Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2

Now one of these is not wired to the case....

However,as I said the front one works as usb 2 in MS.
I belive this if 20 [EHCI]) indicates that it's usb 2.0

Not sure which USB hub is which yet though.

I am thinking to recompile my kernel with only support for ehci. I compiled it myself, so it's likely I made an error. Before I did that i remember it ran pretty fast. Did you compile yours?

I found this:

Code:

                                                         Supported by...
  ClassCode   USB standard   HCI standard        Speed    rs506a   OSR507
  =========   ============   ================   =======   ======   ======
  0x0c0300      USB 1.x      UHCI "Universal"    12Mbps      X        X
  0x0c0310      USB 1.x      OHCI "Open"         12Mbps               X
  0x0c0320      USB 2.0      EHCI "Enhanced"    480Mbps               X

my lsmod reveals this:

Code:

ohci_hcd               18436  0

So i think i am starting to understand this more now. I need the ehci module to be running guess. I had also better get my Mboard manual out to see which is which hub.

It looks like you only have a 1.1 hub. So i guess you need UHCI support........