USB hard drive very slow

[boombihead]

Hi Guys,

Hope some one can help I’m a Linux newb. Here is my prob, Windows is broken again so i got my knoppix CD and my external USB 2.0 hard drive to back up all my windows files. So far so good everything works.

Once i start the copy it starts get a transfer rate of about 20 MB/s after about a min this drops and fluctuates between 500 kb/s to 3 MB/s it also says stalled every now and again.

the trouble shooting i have already done made sure USB 2.0 is running by loding with cheat code "knoppix usb2" made sure DMA is enabled for all internal disks.

I ran K -> system -> system monitor
Before I start copying this showed everything working good low CPU usage and low memory usage when I start the copy job in seconds memory usage spikes to 99/100 % that is when the transfer speed falls.

I have about 50 Gig worth of data that needs to be backed up and I can't wait a week for it to transfer across. I know I deserve it, it was stupid not to back things up earlier.

Will appreciate any help you guys can give me

Naj.

P.S
I cant do a windows repair install as it says the file system is unknown and needs to be repartitioned. Works fine in knoppix so this is my only option to get my data backed up.

[Zrebel]

I had the exact same thing happen when I copied knoppix to usb stick using 4.0.2, I used konqueror to copy the data. Since my usb drive is ro now, I havn't looked into it much. Get Insert, that should work well and the iso is only 60MB so you can have in less then 1hr or so.

[ckamin]

boombihead:

It is possible that you may have some drive issues in play. Since Windows seems to have a problem with the "file system", Knoppix may be having trouble also. It might be the reason it slows down on some areas while reading. It may not be a USB issue at all, but rather an issue with the source drive you are reading from. Look for error messages mentioning the "superblock" especially.

[boombihead]

Hi Zrebel,

thaks for you comment will try insert right now

ckamin,

there is no issue with the drive as i have put in a second 20 gig IDE drive and and it coppied data to it at full speed.

thanks for your comments guys

[boombihead]

Quick question what is insert and how do i get it

tried

apt-get update && apt-cache search insert

got not results and google came up empty aswell

[boombihead]

found it thanks

really small

cool

[boombihead]

damm Insert is copying files twice the speed Windows dose thanks Zrebel