Slow USB 3.0 speeds

Long time forum forager, first time poster.

I bought a Toshiba 500 GB usb 3.0 hard drive last week and instantly ran home to see how fast I could push it. On my desktop (that I built) I was able to get 200 MB/sec. On my laptop (MSI FX something or other), which I dual boot Windows 7/Ubuntu 11.10, I was able to get about 120 MB/sec on Windows, but on Ubuntu, i get about 25 MB/sec.

lsusb shows:

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bda:0139 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 1532:0015 Razer USA, Ltd
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0480:a007 Toshiba America Info. Systems, Inc.

lspci -vvv shows that the USB 3.0 host controller is using the kernel driver in use is xhci_hcd.

dmesg |grep usb shows:

[ 1815.455368] usb 4-1: new SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[ 1815.475459] scsi7 : usb-storage 4-1:1.0

The built in disk utility says its connected via usb at 705 MB/s, but that's not what it reports when I transfer files over to it.

Not really sure what to do at this point. Any help would be very nice.

Solution 1:

When accessing an external USB hard drive formatted in FAT/NTFS, even though it's V3.0 compliant, transfer speed might be slower than what's expected. I tested with a Western Digital 500GB v3.0. If you're the only one using this e-HDD, format it to EXT4, that's way better and transfer speed should increase.

To benchmark Read/Write rates for your e-HDD, you can use the Disk Utility (Install it, from Software center). You can run it then, from Terminal using the command: gnome-disks (previously known as palimpsest).

Beware that the Write Benchmark tests require your e-HDD to be empty.

*Note: Use the same files if you benchmark speed between MS Windows and Ubuntu. And use a reliable tool in MS Windows to get accurate transfer speed information (I wouldn't even use the utility provided by the e-HDD vendor). Don't rely on the info displayed on the transfer dialog when copying files to or from your e-HDD, they're usually incorrect.
Also, 705Mb/s is a big marketing lie.