Strange problem with usb hard drives

[himansk]

I have a USB2.0 enclosure for SATA 2.5" drives. Last week I replaced my 80GB internal drive in the macbook pro with a 160GB Hitachi drive and put the old drive in a USB enclosure. Everything was working fine when suddenly since yesterday I started noticing slow transfer speeds (especially write to USB) on this hard drive. Transfer speeds are in the range of 10MB per minute which is slow by any standards. I tried another drive (USB2.0 to PATA 80GB) and it is behaving the same. I tried these drives on a PC and they work fine so its not a problem with the drives.
What do you think is the problem here?
Mine is 15" Macbook Pro rev A, 2.0 CD, 1.5GB

 

[mad jew]

Have you restarted? Have you tried a different port? If it's still dodgy, try a quick SMC reset.

 

[himansk]

Yes i tried restarting, SMC reset, trying different ports, trying a different computer.

 

[beeroll]

RE: strange USB hard drive problem - slow transfer rates.

Yes i tried restarting, SMC reset, trying different ports, trying a different computer.

Hi there,

I am having the same issue with two new LaCie Porsche Design USB enclosures - I'm getting USB 1.1 transfer speeds. Did you manage to resolve your problem, and if so, what worked? If not, does anybody else have any suggestions?

 

[Freyqq]

yea..i have a hd that has both USB2 and firewire 400 ports so you could use either. firewire goes at least 2x as fast in osx, but in windows its pretty even.

maybe osx just doesn't like usb2 hd?

 

[CanadaRAM]

yea..i have a hd that has both USB2 and firewire 400 ports so you could use either. firewire goes at least 2x as fast in osx, but in windows its pretty even.
maybe osx just doesn't like usb2 hd?

Firewire 400 is really 2x as fast as USB2.0, real world, for data transfers of any volume at all.