Really slow file transfers in my new G30.

[g8ina]

Morning guys

Just started moving files from my old 320GB HDD to my new 1TB drive in my nice shiny new G30 system, trouble is they're only moving at 2.7MB/s !!

Any clues as to why this might be ?

[James @ Scan]

Hi David

How have you got the two drives connected?

[g8ina]

One in SATA II port 3 and the other in SATA II port 4.

Ive updated all the drivers and Windows is also fully up[dated. I even ran the GigaByte installation CD again just to make sure it was all installed, but everything said it was about to over install older drivers, so I left it. I also swapped cables around.

It may have *some* bearing on the matter that the Corsair SSD installed in the system just died and is on its way back on an RMA !

Before the SSD died, I fixed my immediate problem by running Ubuntu Live off a CD and got 54MB/s, thus proving it aint the hardware !

So, what else might I be looking at when the SSD gets back ? Reverting to XP ? hehehehe

[watercooled]

What's CPU load like during transfer? Also, are you transferring lots of small files or a few larger ones? If the motherboard has an additional SATA controller, try disabling it in BIOS and moving everything to the chipset ports, I've had fairly serious issues with some JMicron controllers in the past.

[g8ina]

Its all Intel controllers. Zero CPU load other than transfer, cant remember what it was showing. And lots of small files, but also same results on a couple of 3-8 GB files.

The two SATA are II and III, and the SSD was into the III port, two HDD in II ports.

Gonna wait and see what the new SSD brings, not that I think it had that much to do with it

Thanks for all the helpful comments

[watercooled]

Slower speeds are to be expected with a ton of tiny files, but it shouldn't be happening with large files where you'd expect to get close to the HDDs peak speed i.e. >100MB/s for modern drives. The reason I ask about CPU load is antivirus can cripple file transfer speeds, especially if you're moving a load of archives or executables; transferring files shouldn't max the CPU on a stock Windows install, if it is then finding out what process is consuming cycles could help diagnose it.

The SSD shouldn't make a difference to transfer speed between the two drives. Are both the drives relatively new? You could benchmark each one with something like HD Tune to see if one drive is unusually slow. Very slow/erratic transfer speeds can occasionally be caused by a failing HDD, so checking SMART stats wouldn't hurt either.

[g8ina]

ahhhhhh didnt think about that aspect of AV, I'll check it out when the SSD comes back cheers !