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Archive 2013 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...

  
 
NathanHamler
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


So i just picked up a new Mac Mini quad i7 machine....i had an iMac before with a fair bit less power, so i'm happy with the upgrade...I previously used FW800 drives on my iMac to store my libraries on....with this one, i decided to use the internal SATA HDD to store my libraries on, thinking that it would be faster....i didn't notice a huge difference at previews loading within Aperture once i moved the library to the internal drive (vs the FW800), so i decided to do a disk speed test...what i found was surprising....

I expected the internal sata drive to be faster than the FW800 (despite it being 5400 rpm, rather than 7200), but it wasn't....

also, i expected an external USB 3.0 drive to be faster than FW800 as well, but again, it wasn't.

Even if the USB 3.0 drive was 7200 rpm, i dont think it would be worth it, when you consider the processor overhead that USB has, that FW doesn't...

Does this really simply come down to the USB 3.0 and Internal SATA drives being 5400 rpm, rather than 7200?

I may as well just continue using the FW drives, as their speed isn't TERRIBLE...I've considered putting individual projects/libraries on the SSD while working, and then moving them off to another drive, which i may do, but still, i'm disappointed in USB 3.0 for now...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7356/9528071115_4d6505c2ca_o.jpg



Aug 17, 2013 at 07:42 AM
OwlsEyes
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


I just did something very similar to you. I had been using a 2010 21.5" iMac and added an i7 mac mini w/ a 1TB 5400 internal drive & 27" Apple Thunderbolt screen. My storage and working drive had been a FW800 Drobe 4 (new style). At first the performance was improved with image reviews being a bit faster, but I did not see the performance boost I expected.
Within a day I maxed out my ram to 16GB and this really sped up the processing and speed of both Aperture and CS5. With respect to drives, I purchased a Seagate GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt converter. This transforms any bare 7200 esata or Seagate backup plus drive to thunderbolt. The combo of a 4TB backup plus and GoFlex was around $300 at BestBuy. I moved all my raw files to the thunderbolt drive and now my machine screams when compared to my former iMac.

Your bottleneck is your connectivity. If you go thunderbolt and add ram, you will see a major improvement.
regards,
bruce



Aug 17, 2013 at 08:10 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


Lots of small data transfers (aka random data transfers) are notoriously slow with hard drives. Only an SSD will make a substantial difference.

Once you start doing large sustained data transfers you will notice the HDDs speed up, and at that stage the interface differences will be more apparent.

I've been told that the USB interface - 3.0 and earlier - have a relatively high overhead when dealing with lots of files whereas FW is relatively efficient. However, once you start sustained transfers the latest USB 3.0 is likely to be faster than FW, at least up to the point where the HDD / operating system max out. Ethernet LANs are also relatively inefficient.

There are a few ways to speed up USB 3 and internal HDD data transfers:
- use a 7200 rpm drive so that data sectors on any track will reach the drive head sooner.
- use a newer drive because newer is generally faster
- use a drive with a larger built-in data cache (64MB is far better than 8MB)
- use a drive that doesn't slow down its rpm (avoid green drives)
- use a larger capacity drive so that more data fits on each data track and fewer head movements are needed to reach different tracks.
- partition the drive so that you only use the first 40% or so, so that fewer data tracks need to accessed. This will provide a substantially faster average transfer speed than you can get from the rest of the drive.
- use a RAID 0 (stripe) drive pair to speed up transfers, most noticeably on the USB 3 interface - but be aware that sharing data over multiple drives increases the likelihood of data loss due to hardware failure, so that backups are even more important than usual.

SSDs are faster because they can transfer data faster, do not need time to move drive heads from track to track, and do not need to wait for data to physically rotate to where the drive head is.

Even on a USB 3 interface an SSD ought to pretty fast, and much faster than FW800.

- Alan



Aug 17, 2013 at 08:45 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


Thunderbolt will not do wonders for a slow, small, or old HDD (Nor a Drobo, for that matter) but it does do wonders for external RAID 0 arrays of HDDs or SSDs.



Aug 17, 2013 at 08:53 AM
EB-1
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


I get over 165MB/sec. actual sustained file transfer speed (230 GB of files, not benchmarks) over an SATA to USB 3.0 bridge to my laptop.

There is a bottleneck in your system, probably either the bridge or the USB 3.0 host. A crappy hard drive is not the best device for testing that either.

EBH



Aug 17, 2013 at 10:21 AM
Eyeball
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


Seems to me that your test was sort of apples to oranges. Were any of those disks the same make and model?

I would think that any of those interfaces should be able to reach the maximum sustained read and write speeds of any single hard drive. Hooking up an external SSD might give you more of feel for the interface behavior/bottlenecks.



Aug 17, 2013 at 10:51 AM
15Bit
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


70MB/s is a bit low for a modern large capacity 5400rpm drive. If it is 500Gb or smaller though, and based on 3-4 year old technology, then that value is about right.

I think it is worth pointing out that your benchmarks are measuring sequential read and write, which is easiest to test and gives the biggest numbers. It also doesn't reflect real usage, nor does it highlight the inadequacies of external buses like USB and Firewire (high latency, lack of command queueing etc) relative to native SATA/eSATA. Try booting off a USB3 drive and you'll definitely notice it runs slower than a natively connected SATA drive.

With respect to apparent performance - are you sure disk I/O is the bottleneck? Programs like LR and Aperture are real-time rendering raw files with accompanying edits, which is actually much more CPU intensive than disk intensive. Upgrading your hard drives and coughing up for thunderbolt connectivity might not yield you much improvement.




Aug 17, 2013 at 11:07 AM
NathanHamler
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


lot of good answers here....i appreciate the insight....The processor power of the new Mac Mini is at least double what my old iMac was.....(2.3 quad i7 vs a 3.06 dual i3)....i already can see a difference in that respect...i may need to pull out the factory 1tb drive, and put in a 7200 rpm drive with more cache....that has to be where the issue is...all the USB 3.0 drives i have are smaller, portable 1tb drives that i use for backups....i agree that getting an SSD and hooking up to a USB 3.0 enclosure would be the best bet to test I/O speed....

Also, i'd love to do external thunderbolt storage, but i'm using the TB port as a mini display port, and the hdmi port for the other display...only way to use the TB port for a display AND tb storage, wouls be with a thunderbolt display....which i'm not buying lol.



Aug 17, 2013 at 12:06 PM
BenV
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


Your hard drive is bottle necking, 5400 is garage.

Edited on Aug 19, 2013 at 10:08 AM · View previous versions



Aug 17, 2013 at 01:19 PM
Mr Mouse
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


I was quite impressed with an external 4TB seagate USB 3 disk on my dell windows workstation as Disk E:
http://www.mouseprints.net/old/dpr/DiskPerf.jpg



Aug 17, 2013 at 08:30 PM
Alan321
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


Those 1TB external drives are probably 5400rpm, 8MBcache, 2.5" drives. Not the best choice except for portability. Get an empty case and put your own choice of drive in it. Perhaps smaller than 1TB to get 7200 rpm.

I suspect that your Mac Mini does not have an eSATA port but I may be wrong. Apple seems to be getting rid of anything that might be useful.



Aug 18, 2013 at 08:09 AM
WAYCOOL
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


http://www.dougieville.us/home/DiskSpeedTest.jpg


My USB thumb drive is faster than all OP's spinning drives using his logic all USB 3 thumb drives are faster than all spinning drives.



Aug 18, 2013 at 11:42 AM
NathanHamler
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


WAYCOOL wrote:
My USB thumb drive is faster than all OP's spinning drives using his logic all USB 3 thumb drives are faster than all spinning drives.


I fail to see the point of this post.....



Aug 18, 2013 at 08:48 PM
Beni
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


I get 70mb/s write using a whole bunch of USB3 drives on pretty much all of my computers. We have about 5 of different makes in the studio.


Aug 19, 2013 at 02:46 AM
Paul Mo
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


Same here - 70mb/s seems its limit.


Aug 19, 2013 at 03:16 AM
WAYCOOL
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


Paul Mo wrote:
Same here - 70mb/s seems its limit.


Mr. Mouse posted results of 174.9 MB/s reads and 135.5 MB/s writes for his USB3 hard drive and the USB3 bus is capable of transferring data at up to 5Gbit/s which translates to a real world speed after overhead of around 400 MB/s. 70MB/s is hardly its limits seems your assumption is a bit low.



Aug 19, 2013 at 11:09 AM
aubsxc
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


Perhaps this is a limitation with Apple's usb3.0 driver or hardware implementation? I use external drives with usb3.0 and can bench at close to native sata speeds without issues on my Windows boxes.


Aug 19, 2013 at 11:34 AM
Dave_EP
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


My MacMini server with USB3 gets around 87MB/s with a 2TB 7200 rpm drive.


Aug 19, 2013 at 03:06 PM
Alan321
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


I used the expresscard port on my 2011 17" MBP to get eSATA and USB 3.0 capability but I soon discovered that the speed of that port has been significantly limited compared to what the adapter cards and an expresscard port are normally capable of. They also did a lousy job of implementing SATA III for the internal drive. Good ol' Apple, always doing its best for the users Maybe they've done the same thing with the Mac Mini.

Perhaps the only port you can trust to work properly these days is Apple's new baby, thunderbolt, but it costs a lot to get the necessary adapters for USB 3 and eSATA and FW800.

Given the general advertising for USB 3 ports - always quoted as up to 5 Mbps - it's no wonder that people get disappointed with real-world single-drive performance. Drive manufacturers in particular would know that their external drives will never give anything like that sort of performance.

- Alan



Aug 21, 2013 at 01:21 AM
Dave_EP
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Un-impressed with USB 3.0...


OK - so my new USB3 dual dock arrived today. I added 2x2TB Seagate drives as a RAID 0 and ran the speed test.

(MacMini)

Read 213MB/s
Write 244MB/s

I'd call that pretty useful, and since it's over a single USB3 cable from the Mac Mini I'd say it's unlikely to be the MacMini or the drivers keeping your USB3 drive so slow. It's more likely to be the HDD itself.



Aug 21, 2013 at 11:10 AM
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