Question : Very slow file copy to external Western Digital USB drive Win XP

Hello everyone,

My problem is very slow file copy when I copy large (500 MB to 1 GB and higher) video files from my internal laptop SATA drive to an external Western Digital My Book using either a USB 2.0 or 1394 connection. File copy times are also very slow when copying files from one Western Digital My Book to a second Western Digital My Book on a separate USB port or separate USB / 1394 ports. (I have 2 My Books.)

File copy times are asymmetric as follows:

1.  Copy from internal SATA to external My Book:  500 - 768 Kbytes/sec
2.  Copy from external My Book to internal SATA:  about 21 Mbytes/sec

All of the external drives are setup to 'optimize for performance'. All of the drives are formatted for NTFS.

File transfers appear to be OK for external-to-internal transfers, but the speed seems to be capped or limited for internal-to-external transfers. This behavior is the same whether I copy files with Windows Explorer or with a program like TeraCopy. The behavior is the same whether I try to copy over a USB 2.0 interface or a 1394 interface (that is, file transfers TO the external drive are very much slower than file transfers FROM the external drive.) The disk drivers installed for the Western Digital drives are the Microsoft drivers from Win XP SP2.

I have seen numerous posts about slow file transfers with Western Digital My Books but nothing exactly the same as my situation. I have also seen reports of slow file copy for very large files. However, I have not seen any solutions or fixes.

I would very much appreciate any help you can provide to achieve faster file copy performance.

My system is:
Dell XPS M1530 Laptop
Windows XP SP2
My Book Home Edition 500 GB, USB 2.0 connection
My Book Home Edition 1 TB, 1394 connection
My Book Disk Drivers are Microsoft v5.1.2535.0

Answer : Very slow file copy to external Western Digital USB drive Win XP

"up to" two EHCI could mean one
Thinking out loud, you've no usb keyboard, no usb mouse connected, nothing sharing the same usb channel, that might somehow cause it to use USB 2.0 speeds for reading but kick/waffle to USB 1.1 speeds for writing?  A laptop so probably not.
Did I read that right, it does the same thing copying from internal SATA to external 1394 firewire?  Same as usb?  Hmm.  Well some chipsets serve a dual role of usb and 1394 controller, so it might still be a controller issue.  OR, or, it could be the usb/firewire logic board in the drive enclosure is lowsy.
Copy test from external to external aside, that muddies/complicates things, why don't you first test internal to external, just one, and external to internal, on your laptop (which you seem to have done), and THEN try the same tests with that drive connected to a different machine, a desktop computer with usb 2 and/or firewire that works at the full speed in both directions for the drive said desktop already uses.  THAT would help diagnose whether it's a laptop issue or an external drive issue.

What drivers?  Well, you might try uninstalling the USB controller/hub devices under Device Manager and then let Windows redetect and automatically find drivers using Windows Update (requires a working internet connection)  

Alternatively I'd say try the chipset drivers from the Dell site BUT INTERESTINGLY they only list downloads for Windows Vista in the main category so I gather it was preleaded with Vista, intended to be Vista, and you chose to redo it as XP instead.  I guess Dell support may cop-out on your problem.  Well, I do notice the Intel chipset driver reads Vista32/XP  http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=ca&cs=cabsdt1&l=en&s=bsd&ServiceTag=&SystemID=XPS_M1530&os=WLH&osl=en&catid=&impid=