What the Transfer Rate of a USB 3.0 HDD should be?

[acolombo]

I bought a USB 3.0 enclosure for my old Notebook hard disk, but I had to buy the cable separately.

Now i'm not very sure if the cable is a real USB 3.0 cable, because the speeds I get in the HD Tune benchmark are pretty slow comparing them with other HHDs...

 

What do you think about it? What the right speed should be?

 

[Aniallation]

What does the cable look like? And in reality it will still be limited to the speed of the disk itself, not the speed of the interface.

[Keystone Nyan Cat]

A longer cable will reduce its speed (based off what I've experienced) so you could try running a shorter cable.

 

I just benched my WD My Passport (2TB) to compare against what you are using and I am getting a bit slower if not identical results. It may appear to be odd since when these HDDs are in our computers, they net around 100MB/s, but I am assuming this drop could be because of the way in which the data is accessed in this form of an interface.

 

I hope this helps!

 

Edit- it would be useful to know the kind of enclosure you are using.

[acolombo]

What does the cable look like? And in reality it will still be limited to the speed of the disk itself, not the speed of the interface.

 

The cable looks like an USB 3.0 cable, but since the auction was aimed at Samsung S5 charging and data cable, I thought this may be just a fake cable with 3.0 connectors but 2.0 internal cables.

[Aniallation]

The cable looks like an USB 3.0 cable, but since the auction was aimed at Samsung S5 charging and data cable, I thought this may be just a fake cable with 3.0 connectors but 2.0 internal cables.

Apparently a lot of the cheapo Amazon/eBay "USB 3.0" cables marketed towards S5/Note 3 are fake (wired for 2.0)

[samcool55]

The cable looks like an USB 3.0 cable, but since the auction was aimed at Samsung S5 charging and data cable, I thought this may be just a fake cable with 3.0 connectors but 2.0 internal cables.

It's probably the easiest to post some pics of the thing. Also i think it's not usb 3.0, i have an external HDD with usb 3.0 and in windows 7 it reads and writes 65mb/s ish. I tried the w10 beta and if i used the hdd then i had 100mb/s read and 70mb/s write...

So it depends also from the os, usb3.0 is better supported in w8 and up. The cable part that you put in the pc is most of the time blue instead of black btw...

[acolombo]

A longer cable will reduce its speed (based off what I've experienced) so you could try running a shorter cable.

 

I just benched my WD My Passport (2TB) to compare against what you are using and I am getting a bit slower if not identical results. It may appear to be odd since when these HDDs are in our computers, they net around 100MB/s, but I am assuming this drop could be because of the way in which the data is accessed in this form of an interface.

 

I hope this helps!

 

Edit- it would be useful to know the kind of enclosure you are using.

 

Yeah, that's why I thought my results were weird, I've always seen benchmarks for my internal HDDs around 100MB/s so I was disappointed.

The enclosure is pretty good.

It came from a Lacie Rikiki, a pretty good brand...

 

[acolombo]

Apparently a lot of the cheapo Amazon/eBay "USB 3.0" cables marketed towards S5/Note 3 are fake (wired for 2.0)

 

So how to get a genuine one for cheap?

This is the second one I bought, the first one wasn't working at all with the HDD, and I think we proved this one is just a 2.0...

[Keystone Nyan Cat]

You can try asking WD or Seagate. WD has really nice small cables and Seagate has extra long ones. You can even offer paying a couple of bucks for it, I'm sure they won't mind sending one across. Alternatively, you can try looking for cable accessories from brand name external HDD companies.

 

I hope this helps!

[Aniallation]

So how to get a genuine one for cheap?

This is the second one I bought, the first one wasn't working at all with the HDD, and I think we proved this one is just a 2.0...

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=103&cp_id=10303&cs_id=1030310&p_id=11171&seq=1&format=2

 

http://www.ncix.com/detail/cables-to-go-1m-usb-59-90836-1684.htm

[Razor512]

Do you have access to a fast USB 3 flash drive (mainly just to check if the port is performing properly)

 

Also some external enclosures will simply use low quality controllers which will limit the effective speeds of the drive (for cheaper enclosures, it is best to go with eSATA ones)

 

USB 3 cables that are low end, eg., the $1-2 ones from ebay, will offer full USB 3 speeds up to around 3 feet if they are not really shielded.

 

Also some PC cases may come with bad USB 3 front panel connectors.

 

And finally, check the drive when it is directly connected to your PC to see if it is performing well, as if the drive is failing, it will perform more slowly, especially if it is getting many seek errors, which is common with laptop drives since there are many people who move their HDD based laptops around while they are running, or worst, change its angle (e.g., someone suddenly closing the laptop lid, then rotating it sideways and walking around with it while the drive is still spinning).

[CommandMan7]

I have a Seagate 1 TB Portable and it gets around 100MB/S but the cord's only 1 foot long.