Missy1cw
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For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
New to this forum. Many (including Craig Anderton) advise to put audio
and sample files on separate drives, even USB 3.0 thumb drives, to lighten main
drive/system resources. Can’t seem to find answer to this question: regarding
"real world" transfer speeds, how does a USB 3.0 thumb drive compare to a 7200 RPM USB 3.0
(eg. Seagate) external storage drive, vs. my internal e-sata 7200 RPM system
drive? (X3 Producer: 6-month old Dell XPS, i7-4720, quad-core 3.8 MHz, 16G Ram, Win 8.1).
Thanks much.
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Kalle Rantaaho
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/11 06:24:09
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Welcome to the forum!
I don't know the answer to your question, but you don't need USB 3 to multitrack to an external HDD, USB 2 is fast enough.
I don't know, where the delelopment has taken us today, but not very long ago the biggest benefit of SSD/flash was faster reading, not so much writing.
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AT
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/11 10:50:40
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The problem w/ thumb drives is the read/write speed - some are verryyy ssslllloooowww. You would have to check them individually. The USB slot itself is fast enough but you'll have to pay for a faster thumb drive.
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Jim Roseberry
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/11 11:02:49
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☄ Helpfulby mettelus 2015/08/11 13:04:32
A USB Thumb drive is nowhere near the speed of a USB3 HD. With a USB3 HD (connected to an Intel USB3 controller), you should see the full speed of the HD. ie: If the HD would sustain 150MB/Sec connected via SATA-III, you should see 150MB/Sec connected via USB3. USB3 tops out ~550MB/Sec sustained. FWIW, "e-SATA" stands for external SATA. Internal SATA drives are just referred to as SATA HDs. e-SATA (external SATA) is typically limited to SATA-II (which really isn't much of a limitation with conventional HDs). That being the case, USB3 would have more bandwidth. With that said, USB enclosures often have firmware that (automatically - with no ability to change) put the HD into sleep mode after a brief period of inactivity. This is a royal PITA if used for anything but backup/transfer purposes. Intel SATA-III controllers (internal SATA ports) offer the most bandwidth. Think of Flash Drives as a means of portable transfer. That's their designed purpose... They offer nowhere near the speed of a fast conventional HD and certainly nowhere near the speed of a fast SSD. A fast 2.5" SSD sustains ~520MB/Sec when connected to an Intel SATA-III controller. When connecting to 3rd-party SATA-III controllers, this figure typically drops to ~360MB/Sec sustained. In short, just make sure the bus you choose isn't limiting performance. A conventional SATA HD will perform about the same (MB/Sec sustained) when connected via: Intel SATA-II, Intel SATA-III, e-SATA, and Intel USB3.
post edited by Jim Roseberry - 2015/08/11 11:10:34
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TheMaartian
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/11 11:14:19
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AT
The problem w/ thumb drives is the read/write speed - some are verryyy ssslllloooowww. You would have to check them individually. The USB slot itself is fast enough but you'll have to pay for a faster thumb drive.
@
+1 Thumb drives are the modern equivalent of cassette tapes. They stored data. They were writable. They were (usually) readable. They were portable. But it wasn't storage I could access in real time. I installed Native Instrument's K9 Ultimate from their distribution external hard drive plugged into a front USB 3 port on my XPS 8500. That worked great. My biggest concern is, while having 6 USB 2 ports and 4 USB 3 ports, I don't know how many physical USB hubs I have. I never did get an iLok to work reliably on my system. I have a MIDI keyboard on USB. I have a Logitech unifying wireless receiver (for keyboard and mouse) on USB. I have an HD webcam with a mic on USB. I have a Tascam audio i/f on USB. Now I'm gonna stick some mission-critical USB storage device into that? Not me. I'd go with a second physical hard drive if you have an open slot and connector for one. But that's just my opinion. And if you gave me a nickel for it, I'd have to give you some change.
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ampfixer
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/11 17:52:29
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All my working drives have been replaced with Intel SSD's and I hope I never have to go back. Less heat, faster and able to take an accidental jolt without fear. My 1 TB Black drive is used for long term storage. I had the guys install a hot swap bay on my tower and I can plug in hard drives like 8 track tapes. Backup has never been easier. I will get that drive bay installed on any new machines in the future.
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Jim Roseberry
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/11 19:26:00
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Hi John,
FWIW, You can do the same thing with a USB3 docking station (easily swap SATA drives for quick/easy backup and data shuffling).
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mettelus
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/11 19:29:22
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I don't know, I find the "8-track" analogy kinda catchy.
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tlw
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/12 10:48:08
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The Windows device manager will tell you how many USB hubs you have.
It's easy to add more, just get a USB expansion card. I've found I get the best audio interface performance out of a PCIe USB interface, rather than using a port on the motherboard.
If you want to check the speed of various drives there are free programmes that can do this - just google for drive benchmarking software. Another way is to zip up loads of data into one enormous multi-gigabyte file then start transferring it around drives and time how long it takes. Though that won't tell you what the seek time (how long it takes the drive to move from one file to another) of the drives is like, and for accessing lots of small files (like samples) seek time can affect things more than the sequential transfer rate.
USB sticks often have good seek times but poor reading/writing performance for large fiiles. Window's speed boosting swap technology, introduced with Vista, which uses a USB drive for some swap file functions and a SATA drive for others is based on that difference. Small swaps get written to the USB and larger ones to SATA. It's irrelevant technology if you have a system SSD but can improve swapping performance otherwise. It does tend to wear USB sticks out quite quickly though because it means they get a huge number of write/erase cycles.
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TheMaartian
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/12 13:33:42
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tlw
The Windows device manager will tell you how many USB hubs you have.
It's easy to add more, just get a USB expansion card. I've found I get the best audio interface performance out of a PCIe USB interface, rather than using a port on the motherboard.
From the following, how many physical USB hubs do I have, which are USB2 and which are USB3, and which USB ports are connected to which hubs? See my problem? There's no "map" in Dell's documentation anywhere, and the CSRs are clueless (because they have no manual to look the answer up in!). I will absolutely look into the PCIe route. Any recommendations on cards? Thanks.  I'm guessing 3 physical hubs, 2 USB2 and 1 USB3 (the xHCI hub), with all 4 USB3 ports (2 front/2 back) on the USB3 hub, the top 2 USB2 ports on one USB2 hub, and the back 4 USB2 ports on the other USB2 hub. But who knows? No one at Dell that I talked to, that much I know.
post edited by TheMaartian - 2015/08/12 13:44:05
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tlw
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/13 14:16:03
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☄ Helpfulby TheMaartian 2015/08/13 16:59:03
To see what's connected to what in the USB configuration go into device manager's view menu and select the "show devices by connection" option. That will show you which ports connect to which controller etc.
USB 1.1 controllers are labelled "Universal Host".
USB 2 controllers are labelled "Universal Host" and "Enhanced Host" or just "Enhanced Host".
USB 3 controllers are labelled as USB 3.
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TheMaartian
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/13 16:51:38
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tlw
To see what's connected to what in the USB configuration go into device manager's view menu and select the "show devices by connection" option. That will show you which ports connect to which controller etc.
USB 1.1 controllers are labelled "Universal Host".
USB 2 controllers are labelled "Universal Host" and "Enhanced Host" or just "Enhanced Host".
USB 3 controllers are labelled as USB 3.
Well, shiver me timbers! That's a View option I never considered. And I was writing real-time code running under Win386 (yeah, that long ago  ). Thanks!
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tlw
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/13 19:54:49
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☄ Helpfulby TheMaartian 2015/08/13 20:46:55
Another useful view is to see ghost/hidden devices. These are devices that have been connected but aren't now. Windows has habit of retaining entries for these even when they're the same thing that's been connected to USB ports. MIDI devices in particular seem to end up as these ghosts unless always connected to the same USB socket. Which can result in MIDI devices being connected but refused by Windows because the allowed number of ports has been used up. Or why Windows announces it,s installing the driver for a MIDI device that's been connected auccessfully before, but to a different socket. It's not unusual to find ghosts of other hardware lurking around as well.
post edited by tlw - 2015/08/13 20:02:31
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Sycraft
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/19 04:31:04
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Jim Roseberry
A USB Thumb drive is nowhere near the speed of a USB3 HD.
Some are. The Sandisk Extreme USB 3.0 drives are faster than 7200RPM HDDs, and are roughly as fast as old SATA-2 SSDs. They get in the realm of 250MB/sec read and 190MB/sec write in my testing. Low latency too (as you'd expect from flash). They have a new one, the Extreme Pro that is supposedly even faster. We use them a lot at work and the limiting factor is always the magnetic drive in the computer. If you need a fast drive for moving files around, they are wonderful. That said, I don't know how good they'd be for sampled data because I haven't checked on their overhead. I think they use BOT rather than UASP so they may put more overhead on the CPU than a drive dock that knows how to do UASP.
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BobF
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/19 08:30:13
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tlw
Another useful view is to see ghost/hidden devices.
These are devices that have been connected but aren't now. Windows has habit of retaining entries for these even when they're the same thing that's been connected to USB ports. MIDI devices in particular seem to end up as these ghosts unless always connected to the same USB socket. Which can result in MIDI devices being connected but refused by Windows because the allowed number of ports has been used up. Or why Windows announces it,s installing the driver for a MIDI device that's been connected auccessfully before, but to a different socket.
It's not unusual to find ghosts of other hardware lurking around as well.
Here's an Anderton article on this ... still relevant as of 8.1 http://www.harmonycentral...dows-midi-port-problem
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Missy1cw
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/28 22:56:27
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Thanks everyone. Been offline for awhile. You all have answered not only my question but a whole bunch more that I didn't know I should have asked! Lots of great info. This is a great forum for sure. I'll definitely look into the newest SSD drives when $ allow. Thanks again. While I purchased X3 a few months ago, complications in my life have kept me from it. I'm sure I'll need more help once I get into it.
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BassDaddy
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Re: For audio, comaprative transfer speed of 3 types of drives
2015/08/31 11:16:06
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Jim Roseberry
Hi John,
FWIW, You can do the same thing with a USB3 docking station (easily swap SATA drives for quick/easy backup and data shuffling).
Thanks for that Jim. As soon as I read it I knew I had to have it. That adds a lot of value to the 320 and 500 GB SATA II's laying around.
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