Mac Pro :: Very Slow Transfer Speeds With External Hard Drives Through Firewire And USB?
Nov 30, 2008
My external drives transfer very slowly on my MacPro. I've been searching for answers and have turned up very little.
Just to make a note, I measured my disk speeds with both AJA System Test and copying files between drives and reading the Disk Activity in Activity Monitor.
I have 3 external drives, all MyBook Premium or Professional, 1x 500GB, 1x 1TB and 2x 1TB in RAID 0. I had them on Firewire 400 and the RAID 0 2TB one on Firewire 800. My transfers on FW were all around 24MB/sec on all drives (much less than what I should be getting with FW400). I then read somewhere that the FW bus on the MacPro uses the slowest speed connected for all FW connections. So I unplugged everything but the FW800 Raid 0 drive and my transfer rate jumped to 40-60MB/sec. This is much better, but still about half or so of what I expect it should be producing from an external RAID 0 setup.
To keep my FW800 backup drive faster, I've plugged the other two into USB2.0. The transfer speeds on both drives are now hideous, around 10-15MB/sec. This is so slow, but I'm not sure what to try to fix my speeds.
The HD's in the external drives are all 7200rpm, and all should be transferring at a higher rate. Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Ideally I'd like to get everything transferring at rates they should be transferring at, but I'll settle with my current FW800 speed of 40-60MB/sec if I can get my other two drives transferring at a non-snail pace.
Is this a common issue? I can't believe I'm the only one plugging multiple external hard drives into their Mac Pro. I hope someone has a fix or solution for this. I'm all ears!
System: Mac Pro (early 2008) Mac OS X (10.5.5) 3.2Ghz 8-core - 16GB Ram - 4x1TB SATA - GeForce 8800GT - Dell 30" 3008WFP A02 - Gateway 21" FPD2185W - 3xMyBook external drives
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Apr 22, 2009
I have 1TB Seagate Freeagent external (15mb buffer / 7200rpm) connected to MBP. Transfering .avi files using firewire 800 takes about 20 seconds per gb so around 50mb a second - Is that not incredibly slow considering firewire 800 is rated upto 800 mb/s?
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Sep 6, 2010
Has anyone seen anything indicating that there are any new (higher capacity) drives on the horizon in with a 2.5" external FW800 format?
I'm slightly confused why many of the big brands have stopped at 500GB or 640GB drives in their FW800 models. The G-Drive Mini only goes to 500GB, while the WD Passport Studio stops at 640GB. WD do have 2.5" drives at 1TB, and have dine for months, but they're only available in USB2 models.
Any ideas why they all seem to stop short of their highest capacity drives for the faster interfaces? The only ones i can find with 1TB 2.5" drives are the Seagate GoFlex (which i'm not sure about with the swappable interfaces, i've nearly bought one a couple of times but then changed my mind at the last minute), or a couple of companies i've never heard of before who have drives way above the expected price.
Ideally someone will have seen news from WD or G-Tech or someone indicating that new products are on the way. Otherwise, i may end up having to get the GoFlex.
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Jan 17, 2009
After a fiasco with two firewire hard disks (the courier company lost them), I have to purchase an external firewire HD. Once the insurance company refunds my money (which can take up to 90 days), I still want to get the other 2 disks I ordered. Is there a limit on how many firewire drives I can daisy chain? I was thinking on having all 3 hard drives daisy-chained to my iMac.
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Feb 21, 2009
Macbook Pro 17" Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz. Following a logic board replacement for a separate issue. I have two external Firewire 800 Hard drives (two separate brands and sizes) which have suddenly started unmounting randomly and giving the 'hardware removal error'. A few seconds after unmounting they mount again, only to unmount a minute later with the error again. It is now doing this in a loop.I have done the following things:
1. rebooted and checked all cable connections
2. I have tried this with the two disks plugged in separately and daisychained.
3. I have tried two separate Firewire 800 cables.
4. running the Disk Utility.
5.installing the system from scratch on a freshly formatted internal disk.
6. reinstalling again with an archive and install.
Everything seems to work fine with a Firewire 400 connection.The only software setting that I changed is to disable the "Put Hard Disks to Sleep when possible" option in the Energy Saver system prefs. Any connection? I have enabled this again and so far (a couple of hours) so good.Should I be looking at a hardware issue
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Mar 24, 2009
I've been getting terribly slow transfer speeds when trying to send files to friends over iChat. It can even take over 15mins to just send a 1mb file.
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Mar 25, 2012
I'm running Lion Server on a Mac Mini and using SMB to share files between the server and both Windows and Mac machines. I can't figure out why I can only get 2 Mb/s transfer speeds between the server and the other machines. I'm quite certain I'm not limited by my network and the disk write speeds clearly exceed 2 Mb/s. Possible to boost this speed or is this an actual limit of SMB or Lion Server?
Info:
Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.3), Lion Server 10.7.3
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Apr 10, 2012
I am transferring my iPhoto library to an external hard drive and it is agonizingly slow.
I am attempting to make room on our iMac so am moving our 193 GB iPhoto library to our Seagate 2TB external hard drive. The drive is brand new AND is formated properly as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but the current copy estimate is for it be completed in over 80 hours. I dont beleive the drive is broken as data is continuing to be transferred and not completely hung up.
When I transfer other folders/files the process is much much faster. Problem only seems to be with iPhoto library that I have found.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Apr 16, 2012
My Mac Pro is not mounting any new hard drives for some reason. The one's already connected work fine and remain connected (I have three drives connected via eSATA ports). But I can't connect any drives via Firewire 800 or 400. I've tried differnt leads and different ports but none are connecting. I've tried the drive on a different Mac and it connected fine. But on the machine I need to connect to the drives simply dont mount. Nor do they show up in Disk Utility or Soft RAID. I have restarted and powered down several times but nothing is working.
Running OSX 10.6.8 on a Mac Pro (2008) The hard dirves I'm connecting are Lacie.
Info:
Mac Pro (2008), Mac OS X (10.6.7)
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Nov 11, 2009
is there a USB 2.0 > FW800 adapter that exists?
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Feb 1, 2009
My time machine drive conked out this morning, so I need to get a new drive, and I am planning on either a Western Digital MyBook or an OWC of some sort. (Any thoughts?) So here's what I'd like to do. Once I get the backup running again, I'm interested in running a RAID 1 with two external drives. But the catch is this---I have a late model MacBook, so I've only got two USB 2.0 ports. Here's what I'd like to know. Is it possible to chain things together this way: MacBook <--USB-- First HDD <--FW-- Second HDD That is, connect the first drive to the computer via USB (the only option) and the second to the first HDD via firewire.
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Jan 13, 2010
My MBP has one firewire 800 port and I have one external firewire drive. I want to get another external firewire drive but since I only have one FW port, does that mean I can only use one drive at a time? There are times when I know I will need to transfer files from one external drive to another. Is there a way to daisy chain external firewire drives together? Also, will daisy chain slow down the file copy process or even slow down my computer?
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Jul 3, 2012
Can I attach multiple hard drives to my iMac chained by Firewire or do I need a separate port? I now have multiple Western Digital drives and find that sometimes they don't connect to the iMac so I'm wondering if I need a separate port or if my iMac FW port is faulty.
Info:
iMac 24", Mac OS X (10.5.6)
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Jan 25, 2009
I have a Imac 20 with a small 3.5 hard drive and I have bought a bigger 360 gig 3.5 hard drive to replace the old one. I have the new one in an external case with USB 2.0 right now. Is there some way I can transfer the entire contents of the old hard drive on to the new one and then swap out the old drive with the new drive and not miss a beat?
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May 6, 2012
I have an external Lacie 1 TB hard disk which used to operate at USB2 speeds, but ever since I upgraded to my my Intel Mac Pro (from a G5) it only operates at USB1 speeds regardless of which USB port I plug it into. When I open up System Profiler, it reports "speed up to 12 Mb/sec" which of course is only USB1.1. It used to show "speed up to 480 Mb/sec". Do I need to reformat it something? Can I force it to connect at USB2 speeds?
Info:
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2 x 2.66 Dual Core
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May 29, 2012
can data from and external storage device from a windows system be used with a mac?
Info:
MacBook
Pro
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Jun 22, 2012
My iMac is currently being booted from external disk via Firewire 800. I have to do this until I receive new install disks from apple to resore my machine.
The computer is usable, however internet is very slow... I have other devides, windows machine, ipad, iphone and they all run okay.
It seems that because I have booted via the external disk..... internet is slow. Could this be as the OS is needed to refer to the external disk?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Feb 6, 2010
I successfully have my mac mini's external hard drives showing up on my macbook pro, however I have run into into a problem. When bringing up programs like ITunes I get a very slow response or application not responding, I songs and videos show up in ITunes after hours upon hours of loading them in. In Plex t also has this problem. It is hit and miss when I try to play a video that is on the hard drive. This is only happens with video and music. Other files I have no problem. I am using an apple extreme router and an apple express router as a booster.
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Nov 13, 2010
I have 2 WD Caviar Black drives that are installed in my Mac Pro. Both show the exact same part number in Disk Utility, both are less than half full, both verify fine with Disk Utility. However one shows 125-130 MB/s RW with AJA and the other only delivers 90 MB/s. What gives? Just a sub-standard drive? THey are in adjacent bays in the MP, used as is - nothing changed. They are OEM drives thru Amazon from a few months ago. Both were erased and formatted prior to putting them in the MP a few weeks ago.
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Nov 20, 2010
I have a 24" iMac and it was running fine the other week and now I get this annoying error=36 whenever I try to transfer large files from desktop to my external drives. It goes about 1/4 way with the transfers then stops with the error=36 message. I've tried to reset the pram but it won't let me. It just keeps on restarting to the same gray screen with the single short beep tone over and over until I let go of the option, command, P & R buttons and restarts normally but does not reset the pram.
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May 21, 2010
I have a few macs running Tiger and Leopard and do not have a hard drive that is filled to more than 20GB of the capacity. Looking for external hard drive solutions. I have found a couple of very good drives that only have FW 400 and USB 2.0, one in particular is a older model G-Drive 500GB for $50 that is supposed to be quite reliable. These drives are being blown out due to newer ones have esata and fw 800. Would I see a difference in speed cloning or backing up to a a fw 400 drive even if I get a newer mac that only has fw 800 ports and I use a 400-800 adaptor? The better drives are faster 7200 RM vs the slower 5400 drives, mostly portable that I have been looking at. I have been reading posts that for applications such as mine I would not see a difference. For the most part I use the computers for office related tasks including Word, Excel etc with not much else, although I have some different utility programs. I just want a bootable drive should my hard drive fail. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my drives. My main comp has two drives where the primary is cloned to a secondary, but want a external that I can easily plug into a new mac and clone the hard drive in that Mac to my external drive!
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Sep 9, 2008
I am having trouble saving anything to my external firewire hard drive. This started a few weeks ago. I am able to retrieve use but not modify any file on the drive. I have tried changing permissions but no luck.
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Dec 18, 2008
my friend of mine has a external Seagate 500gb firewire 400 drive. It is used for storing audio for his production studio and so has critical data on it. I was transfering some programs to him and plugged it into my Late 08 macbook pro. Everything went ok. The power cable came slightly loose which cause the lovely 'you failed to eject disc properly' error. It then would not mount on my macbook or his G5 (single 2ghz). We tried three different cables. Tried to see if Disk Utility would see it, nope. His other firewire drive mounts fine on both machines as does mine. The Seagate drive can be heard spinning up when the power is turned on. Seems to be a dead Firewire interface on the drive enclosure itself as nothing will mount when using the drive to daisy chain. I was thinking of opening the enclosure and installing the drive as a standard sata internal to get at the data. Warranty doesn't matter just the data.
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Mar 22, 2009
I am in need of an external hard drive for backups of my new 24" iMac due to arrive on Wednesday March 25. I am moving from the PC works (old Dell) and will need something larger than the old one I have for the long term. I have an old external hard drive case and a 250GB ATA hard drive inside I can use for the time being with the new Mac if I reformat it.
That said, I would like to get a drive that is at least equal to what is in the iMac with is 1 TB. I have read a lot of postings and believe I will get a Western Digital MyBook for Time Machine backups (unless someone has a better alternative). Is there any reason to get the Studio 1 or II (FW 800) over the Essential (USB 2.0) for my purposes - backups only? The price difference is $40-80 for equivalent drive space with connections being the difference.
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May 3, 2009
If I connect my Western Digital 500 GB external hard drive up to a computer using the USB port, then can I daisy chain a firewire camcorder to the hard drive and use it with the computer? Or is that impossible?
I hate the fact that the Macbooks don't have firewire, other then the white one. or the Pros.
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Jul 23, 2009
I just got a new hard drive for my Black macbook 2,1 and no i need a good external hard drive to put my old hard drive. Do you guys have any recommendations, I'd like to get something that has firewire and usb.
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Jul 1, 2012
I have a Firewire 800 external hard drive and need to connect to my new MacBook Air. Where can I get the correct cable?
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Apr 23, 2009
This ended up being pretty long but I tried to include as many details as possible. If any more information is needed please just let me know in this thread. I have been trying to figure this out all day and it has been driving me nuts. First of all I have a Macbook with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of RAM and am running Mac OS X Version 10.5.6. Also this is the last generation of the "white" macbook that came out in February I believe of last year.
My external HD is a 1TB Rock Mobile Disk. For some reason when I try to transfer files to or from the external HD to my Mac I am getting nowhere near the expected 480MB/s. I do use a Swiss Gear 4-port USB splitter. When I use the splitter I am getting a transfer rate of about 120MB/s and without it I am only getting about 300MB/s. This is of course if I am only trying to transfer one 800MB movie. If I attempt to transfer multiple seasons of television shows it will drop to as low as 40-50MB/s. Also, if I were to be transferring a single season of a TV show. The transfer speed is much faster to click and drag every episode from my HD to my Mac than it is to transfer the entire folder at once. The whole folder might take 25 minutes but one at a time it will only take about 5.
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Jan 11, 2011
i am very interested in buying a Mac. But I need an external hard drive for my stuff. What are the best 1TB or higher external hard drives for a Mac Book Pro?
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Feb 2, 2009
I currently have a 2TB WD mirror edition that is setup in RAID 1 so it will mirror all my data. Now I also have a bunch of other drives laying around which I also feel the need to back up and currently I am doing this by doing a whole bunch of dragging and dropping and copying and pasting etc etc etc and this is making me very tired. I know that a setup is possible in disk utility but I am not at all sure about how to configure it so I wont lose any of my data.
Some details about my setup:
Mac OS X 10.5.6
PowerPc G5
Harddrives: two 1TB WD MyBooks, and two 500gig WD Mybooks --> these pairs need to mirror each other and make my life less of a hassle.
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