# USB 3.0 Noob WD My Book 3.0



## UNDCTIATC (Apr 16, 2010)

Greetings!
I recently purchased a Western Digital My Book 3.0 external HDD.  It was advertised as a usb 3.0 compliant drive capable of 3.0 Gb/s speeds.  However, I am only able to get 100Mb/s out of it.
It is plugged into a 3.0 Usb compliant port on a Asus P7P55D Pro with 3.0 support.  The drivers are up to date.  
This may answer my own question or not...The fixed HDD is a WD Caviar Black HDD in Sata 3Gb/s.  Would this make the transfer speeds slow?  But I still wonder why if both of them are capable of 3Gb/s speed why is it a significantly low % of the capabilities?  The USB 3.0 support is enabled too.
Any insight, most appreciated


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## Deleted member 3 (Apr 16, 2010)

Assuming you meant 100MB/s that's normal, the drive inside it won't get any faster.


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## UNDCTIATC (Apr 16, 2010)

yeah i meant 100 megabytes per second.  How come it goes so slow?  is it because of the cache of the hdd or the cpu?


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## UNDCTIATC (Apr 17, 2010)

anyone have any other thoughts?


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## Hockster (Apr 18, 2010)

That's about as fast as conventional 7200 RPM drives will go.


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## Phxprovost (Apr 18, 2010)

UNDCTIATC said:


> yeah i meant 100 megabytes per second.  How come it goes so slow?  is it because of the cache of the hdd or the cpu?



 100MB/s is hardly slow


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## DonInKansas (Apr 18, 2010)

Run it in USB 2.0 and see what you get.  If the performance numbers are about triple in 3.0, then you're on par.


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## TheGuruStud (Apr 18, 2010)

That's as fast as the drive goes. It's not a black drive.


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## UNDCTIATC (Apr 18, 2010)

TheGuruStud said:


> That's as fast as the drive goes. It's not a black drive.



Its not a black drive?  But thats what the model is unless you are talking aboot something else.


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## TheGuruStud (Apr 18, 2010)

UNDCTIATC said:


> Its not a black drive?  But thats what the model is unless you are talking aboot something else.



They actually put a black drive in an enclosure? That's a first.

What benchmark are you using?


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## 95Viper (Apr 18, 2010)

TheGuruStud said:


> That's as fast as the drive goes. It's not a black drive.





TheGuruStud said:


> They actually put a black drive in an enclosure? That's a first.
> 
> What benchmark are you using?



Yep, it is a first and it is the new caviar black model with 64MB cache.  

Anyway, back to the OP's  question, yep looks like that is the results you should be seeing.

Look here:  notebookreview.com and computerpoweruser.com.


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## UNDCTIATC (Apr 18, 2010)

ok everyone says that is what i should expect...but WHY?  WTF is the point of a 3Gb/s SATA drive if it only goes 100MB/s?


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## Phxprovost (Apr 18, 2010)

UNDCTIATC said:


> ok everyone says that is what i should expect...but WHY?  WTF is the point of a 3Gb/s SATA drive if it only goes 100MB/s?



3gb/s is roughly what......like ~375MB/s? I think   and your getting 100MB/s out of a mechanical drive? i really dont see what your complaining about   the 3gb/s is the maximum sustainable speed of the bus....not the hdd your running on it


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## Hockster (Apr 18, 2010)

UNDCTIATC said:


> ok everyone says that is what i should expect...but WHY?  WTF is the point of a 3Gb/s SATA drive if it only goes 100MB/s?



Marketing....


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## xvi (Apr 18, 2010)

The hard drive in your external enclosure can only go 100MB/s (which is actually quite good as hard drives go). The reason why it's good to have USB 3.0 is because USB 2.0 will peak out at about 35-40 MB/s. Because USB 2.0 was so slow (relatively), it was often the bottleneck for performance for an external hard drive. Using USB 3.0 allows much faster transfers, but the new bottleneck is now the speed of your drive.

It's sort of like putting tires rated for 200 MPH on your car when the motor can only get you going 90. It gives you the potential to go fast, but not the ability. It's sort of like a standard broadband internet connection. Your local network may be connected at 100 Mbps, but your Cable/DSL modem can only go 1 Mbps.

The speed at which you can transfer something depends on the slowest link. For example:

Instead of..
Your Computer <--USB 2.0 (~40MB/s)--> Your External Drive (100 MB/s)
..you now have..
Your Computer <--USB 3.0 (~500MB/s)--> Your External Drive (100 MB/s)

Long story short, you've gotten rid of one bottleneck and have caught up to a different bottleneck.


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## Deleted member 3 (Apr 18, 2010)

Hockster said:


> Marketing....



This has nothing to do with marketing, the bus is capable of those speeds, the device on the bus simply isn't.


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## Hockster (Apr 18, 2010)

Well the manufacturers know full well their drives can't use the full allotment, but hype it anyway.


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## sweeper (Apr 18, 2010)

My USB HDD is now in my PC and it is a BLACK Edition as well. Supports (up to 3MB's) if you read the fine print. I use it as my primary HDD now (Took it out of the External USB enclosure) and seems to run fine but Windows continues to show it as the slow point of my PC at a rating of 5.7 lol .


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## Deleted member 3 (Apr 18, 2010)

Hockster said:


> Well the manufacturers know full well their drives can't use the full allotment, but hype it anyway.



That is of course poo. They don't hype anything, they say it connects using the SATA2 standard, which it does. When reading from the disks cache it can actually transfer at the SATA2 speeds. 
Any interface in a PC has a certain bandwidth, this doesn't mean every device has to fully use it. Hell, your 33K6/56K modem used to be connected to a 112K serial port, marketing scam I tell you.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Apr 18, 2010)

Would it be faster with one of these in it?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-336-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279


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## Pinchy (Apr 18, 2010)

As mentioned in a few other posts, USB 3.0 is capable of transferring at 3.0Gb/s however, the hard drive is not capable of that speed.

Even on current USB 2.0 devices (like flash drives) they don't all transfer at 60MB/s just because USB 2.0 is capable of it (480mb)...some older drives transfer at 5-10MB/s, just because the drive is slow.

If a USB2.0 device that ran at 20MB/s was converted into USB 3.0, it would still run at 20MB/s as that is the speed that certain device runs at.


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## sweeper (Apr 18, 2010)

Just get 2 drives... RAID and you'll see a difference ... best way for HDD speed IMO.


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## 95Viper (Apr 18, 2010)

tigger said:


> Would it be faster with one of these in it?
> 
> http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-336-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279



Probably, yes, because it is a Sata III drive. Which has a theoretical transfer rate of 6Gb/s.  But, see answer to OP...



Pinchy said:


> As mentioned in a few other posts, USB 3.0 is capable of transferring at 3.0Gb/s however, the hard drive is not capable of that speed.
> 
> Even on current USB 2.0 devices (like flash drives) they don't all transfer at 60MB/s just because USB 2.0 is capable of it (480mb)...some older drives transfer at 5-10MB/s, just because the drive is slow.
> 
> If a USB2.0 device that ran at 20MB/s was converted into USB 3.0, it would still run at 20MB/s as that is the speed that certain device runs at.



Wrong,  USB 3.0 has a theoretical transfer rate of 4.8Gpbs.
You can brush up on it here: SuperSpeed USB 3.0 FAQ

@OP>  The problem you are having is two-fold; (1.) The drive WD placed in the my Book 3.0 is a WD Caviar Black 1 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, WD1001FAES.  Which is a SATA II drive and (2.) more than likely (I could be wrong, as I have not been able to find which one they used and I don't have access to one to pull apart to see), the Controller is a USB 3.0 to SATA II controller and not, a USB 3.0 to SATA III.  As, there is a controller in the enclosure to connect the SATA drive to USB.  If, by chance they did use a SATA III controller and you put a SATA III drive in it, you should see an increase in you speeds.

You would see an even greater increase in speed, with an SSD drive, as it has no mechanical parts and a lower latency.  Spinning platters and moving heads having to search for write space and looking for data when called, this is the crutch to mechanical drives compared to SSD and the new flash drives.

You can decode your drive here:WD Model Number codes

You are getting all you are going to get out of that My Book the way they designed it.

Check this test over at XtremeSystems Forums.






Hope this helps, as I am not very good at explaining things, sometimes.


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## UNDCTIATC (Apr 19, 2010)

Hmm well thats poo...I bought it because they flashed that you could transfer blue rays in a few minutes...should sue for false advertising to the HDD illiterate


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## Pinchy (Apr 20, 2010)

95Viper said:


> Wrong,  USB 3.0 has a theoretical transfer rate of 4.8Gpbs.
> You can brush up on it here: SuperSpeed USB 3.0 FAQ



Yeah USB 3.0 has that hypothetical speed, but his drive is capped at 3.0Gbit as he has a SATA II drive/controller (Refer to the OP). I should have worded my post better, however.



95Viper said:


> @OP>  The problem you are having is two-fold; (1.) The drive WD placed in the my Book 3.0 is a WD Caviar Black 1 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, WD1001FAES.  Which is a SATA II drive and (2.) more than likely (I could be wrong, as I have not been able to find which one they used and I don't have access to one to pull apart to see), the Controller is a USB 3.0 to SATA II controller and not, a USB 3.0 to SATA III.  As, there is a controller in the enclosure to connect the SATA drive to USB.  If, by chance they did use a SATA III controller and you put a SATA III drive in it, you should see an increase in you speeds.



That isn't the case. If both the HDD was SATA III and the controller was SATA III it would still operate at the same speeds it is now, even though the new hypothetical speed would be 4.8Gbit. SATA III is only the interface; if the drive isn't maxxing out the current interface (SATA II, and it isn't as no current HDD runs at 375MB/s) it won't benefit from SATA III at all. The reason USB 3.0 is taken advantage of is because drives were maxxing out USB 2.0 (60MB/s) and therefore while it doesn't operate at the full 4.8GBit (600MB/s) it still utilises part of it.

That is why it would be stupid of WD to put a SATA III drive and/or controller into an enclosure...it would just be wasting their money.


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## 95Viper (Apr 20, 2010)

Pinchy said:


> Yeah USB 3.0 has that hypothetical speed, but his drive is capped at 3.0Gbit as he has a SATA II drive/controller (Refer to the OP). I should have worded my post better, however.
> 
> That isn't the case. If both the HDD was SATA III and the controller was SATA III it would still operate at the same speeds it is now, even though the new hypothetical speed would be 4.8Gbit. SATA III is only the interface; if the drive isn't maxxing out the current interface (SATA II, and it isn't as no current HDD runs at 375MB/s) it won't benefit from SATA III at all. The reason USB 3.0 is taken advantage of is because drives were maxxing out USB 2.0 (60MB/s) and therefore while it doesn't operate at the full 4.8GBit (600MB/s) it still utilises part of it.
> 
> That is why it would be stupid of WD to put a SATA III drive and/or controller into an enclosure...it would just be wasting their money.



I did not explain properly, I guess, or I too, should have worded my post differently.  I know his drive is stuck at SATA II.

The interface he is using is USB 3.0, which is 4.8Gb/s (600MB/s); the My Book enclousure contains a USB to SATA interface, IF, that (I am not speaking of his SATA interface on the motherboard) were SATA III , instead of SATA II and the enclosure contained a SATA III drive (mechanical or SSD) he would get full use of the read/write speeds that the drive could sustain. And, his burst rate would increase.

Which, would be an increase over the set-up as it is now, I did not say he would max out the interface.  However, he should expect an increase with it and an even larger increase if it contained an uber-fast (6Gb/s) SSD that supported higher read/write and burst speeds.

It would not be stupid of WD to include the interface in the enclosure, as it is not much of a cost difference between the two types of interfaces and it would cost them nothing; the cost of a few dollars would be passed to the customer.  IMO, the OP would had been better off to purchase a USB 3.0 interface card, USB 3.0 enclosure and 6Gb/s (HHD or SSD) of his/her choice to create their own setup; you would not get the fluff software, but you could find alternatives for that.

I do agree that with the current state of HDD technology, it would possibly only do the figures he is getting now( maybe a marginal increase) with a SATA III mechanical drive; and, with an SSD he might attain 300+MB/s reads and 150+MB/s writes, however the cost of using the SSD would add hundreds of dollars to the unit.

Basically, you have two walls , the drive and the interfaces and the drive is usually what  hits the wall first, in todays HDD technology.


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## Phxprovost (Apr 20, 2010)

UNDCTIATC said:


> Hmm well thats poo...I bought it because they flashed that you could transfer blue rays in a few minutes...should sue for false advertising to the HDD illiterate



....you could transfer a 25gig iso in about 4 minutes if you can sustain a 100MB/s link....


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## Gzero (Apr 20, 2010)

OP, you got what you bought. 

Transfer speeds of 100megabytes/s? That is sweet over USB, try getting an older sata/ide HDD to do that.

Not much left to discuss.


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## UNDCTIATC (Apr 20, 2010)

OK. i feel learned on this subject now.


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