Using Multiple External USB HDD Drives At Full Speed Requirements?

nick name · May 27, 2021

I'm trying to figure out how I can get all (4) of my external HDDs to run at full speed (~150 MBps). They're plugged into a Lenovo P300 which is about 6~7 years old with an Intel 220 chipset and a Xeon E3 1276 v3. The USB 3.0 ports on it don't seem to have UASP support and the latest Intel drivers are from years ago and for Windows 7.

The behavior I am seeing is when more than one drive is plugged directly into the USB 3.0 ports on the PC then one drive will run full speed and the rest drop to about 20~40 MBps transfer speeds. If I plug the four HDDs into a USB hub then that reduced speed only happens to one of the four drives. I'm assuming the first three HDDs are saturating the 5 Gbps? And why does the hub allow the drives to run at full speed? Does the hub support UASP?

To cure the speeds I seen when plugging directly into the USB ports on the PC do I need a USB PCIe card with UASP support or a multi-channel card? I've ordered a 4 port Startech card with UASP support, but that won't be here for a few more days.

nick name · May 29, 2021

I guess I feel a little less dumb after posting this and folks not chiming in.

Please . . . if anyone knows the answer then it would help me quite a bit.

nick name · May 30, 2021

The Startech USB PCIe card with UASP came in and seems to allow for much better simultaneous HDD write speeds. Oddly it doesn't seem to perform as well as the USB hub, but it's definitely much better for moving files between drives than the onboard USB ports. I also replaced the HDD sleds that had deteriorated mounting grommets so I have two less external HDDs to hook up via USB enclosures.

I am still curious if a multichannel USB PCIe card would have been the ultimate solution though.