Slow USB transfer on 8.04

[speakeasy]

I've noticed since I recently upgraded to 8.04 that my USB transfer speed has severely dissipated. It doesn't matter what device (2 external HD, Flash Drives, and an external CD Drive seems to write a little slower) I'm only getting between 4MB/s and 8MB/s when I was previously getting 20 close to 30!!! And it's starts at around 8MB/s then by the end of the file its down to 4MB/s. Is there anything I can do?

[hermes0710]

Does this happen whatever the size of the file is?

[speakeasy]

the bigger the file the worse the speed (4-5), but even smaller files only get up to around 10... 10.6 was the highest...

[_x_MaD_x_]

I've the same problem in my laptop but I know people with the same Ubuntu and the USB works fine...
It is a bug a driver problem???

[grss1982]

A Gud Day to everyone.

First and foremost I would like to apologize to the mods for bumping this thread.

With that out of the way I wanted to report here that I'm also encountering the same problem as the author of this thread.

Like the author my USB transfer speed has been slow no matter the device. I'm actually getting speeds of when I start copying the file 5.3MB/S and slowly drops to 3MB/S.

BTW my motherboard is an K9N Neo-F V3(MS-7369): http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p...l=K9N_Neo-F_V3

It has the Nforce 560 Chipset.

FULL Specs:

A64 x2 4000+
2gb ddr533
256MB Geforce 7300GT (PCI-E)
K9N Neo-F V3(MS-7369)
80GB Western Digital SATA HDD

[grss1982]

BTW, here is my lspci output:

00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP65 Memory Controller (rev a3)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP65 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP65 SMBus (rev a1)
00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP65 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP65 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP65 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP65 High Definition Audio (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP65 PCI bridge (rev a1)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP65 IDE (rev a1)
00:0a.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP65 SATA Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 045b (rev a1)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP65 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP65 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP65 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7300 GT] (rev a1)

As everyone can see every device is detected. No "Unknown Device" is shown.

[merlin051]

I am also having this problem, the larger the file the worse it gets, speeds drop slower than 3.3mbs.

The devices I'm using are

Buffalo 8gb USB 2.0
Lexar 2gb USB 2.0
unbranded USB2.0 SDHC reader/writer with class 4 8GB card
Sandisk USB 2.0 SD reader/writer 2gb SD card

All of the above hardware works flawlessly in windows XP on my laptop, it seems its something in 8.04 that's messing things up.

Copying a 700mb file, i might aswell not bother as its faster to burn it onto a cd!

Any solution to this?

[detroit/zero]

I've just noticed the same problem as of late. I'm getting speeds of around 3 or 3.5 Mb/s for USB transfers. Transferring a 3.5GB .avi movie file to my external drive came in at just under 10 solid minutes. A week or two ago it wouldn't have taken more than 3 or 5 tops.

lspci:

zero@zero-laptop:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 01)
06:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller
06:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCIxx12 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
06:04.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)
06:04.3 SD Host controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller

lsusb with all my USB devices attached:

zero@zero-laptop:~$ lsusb
Bus 005 Device 008: ID 0781:5406 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer Micro 4GB Flash Drive
Bus 005 Device 007: ID 13fe:1a00 Kingston Technology Company Inc. 512MB/1GB Flash Drive
Bus 005 Device 006: ID 4971:ce03  
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Well, that turned out funny. The SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4GB is actually a 1GB U3 drive. The Kingston 1GB drive is actually a 2GB drive that says GFM on it, but that could be made by anybody. The unidentified drive at Bus 005/Device 006 is actually a 320GB SimpleTech external hard disk. I also have a 256MB SanDisk MMC card from a digital camera that doesn't show up in the list at all. (I thought those counted as USB memory.. I guess not.)

Anywho.. As I said, I've only noticed this for about the last week or two. It's definitely not something that came about with my switch to Hardy from Gutsy; I did a clean install of Hardy.

Hope someone comes up with some answers.. spending 45 minutes to move 10GB worth of files around is a real pain.

EDIT:As soon as I finished writing that, I copied a few more files over to my 320GB drive - close to 3.5GB worth of files. The transfer started out at just shy of 20MB/s (the fastest I've seen it go in a while) and an ETA of 3 minutes. It's now close to five minutes later, the transfer speed is down to 7.7MB/s (and dropping steadily) with the same ETA of 3 minutes shown. In the time it took me to write that last sentence, I'm down to 6.7MB/s.

(I should also add that even though the 320GB SimpleTech drive doesn't identify, I've used it across three versions of Ubuntu - Feisty, Gutsy, and now Hardy - and it's always worked flawlessly. It also works under Vista and XP installs I have on other machines.)

[detroit/zero]

I just did a little experiment.

I took a (close to) 1GB .avi file from my external 320GB drive. I checked the read/write times for both cut/paste and copy/paste to and from all my USB devices.

Obviously the difference between cut and copy is rather negligible, but the difference between read and write times for all my devices is significant.

To cut the file from my drive and write it to my desktop took under one minute. The transfer started out at the slow, 8 or so mb/s speed and worked its way up to 18 or so by the time it finished. To write it back to the drive had the same advertised 1 minute ETA, but took around 2.5 to 3 minutes to complete.

The read/write discrepancies are similar for my 1 & 2GB thumb drives, too. They move even slower than the hard disk, but the write time is much longer than the read times.

I'm not sure what that means, but I'm sure it means something.

[Roostey]

I'm not sure if it's the same problem as I've been having, since some of you appear to have only just started experiencing it, but I've had slow USB and network since I installed Hardy, ie. months.

The exact symptoms were this: copy files to or from any USB device and it would start off at normal speed then fall to around 2MB/s, with large files being affected worse. If I let a slow file copy continue for a very long time then my GUI would become laggy. Cancelling a slow copy, then restarting it would often see the new instance start off at full speed before slowly falling back to 2MB/s again.

Today, I finally found a solution that works for me, I added "pci=routeirq" to my boot options in grub and got both working again at full speed. If you've got the same symptoms, then the following might help.

sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.bak

Now edit the boot options

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Search for "kopt=" (without quotes). It should look something like this

# kopt=root=UUID=efd264eb-0f54-4d58-953a-d89a85a696e4 ro

Now, put a space at the end and add "pci=routeirq" at the end, so it looks like this

# kopt=root=UUID=efd264eb-0f54-4d58-953a-d89a85a696e4 ro pci=routeirq

That sets the default options, so that when you upgrade your kernel the fix gets copied, otherwise it will revert.

Next, change the options on your current kernel, search for

End Default Options

Following this will be the boot options for the currently installed kernels. I added the option to the end of each of my current kernels, but I left alone the recovery ones, just in case.

Before

title		Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root		(hd0,5)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=efd264eb-0f54-4d58-953a-d89a85a696e4 ro quiet splash
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

title		Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic (recovery mode)
root		(hd0,5)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=efd264eb-0f54-4d58-953a-d89a85a696e4 ro single 
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic

title		Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
root		(hd0,5)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=efd264eb-0f54-4d58-953a-d89a85a696e4 ro quiet splash
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic
quiet

title		Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic (recovery mode)
root		(hd0,5)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=efd264eb-0f54-4d58-953a-d89a85a696e4 ro single
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic

After adding "pci=routeirq" to the non recovery options (first and third entries)

title		Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root		(hd0,5)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=efd264eb-0f54-4d58-953a-d89a85a696e4 ro quiet splash pci=routeirq
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

title		Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic (recovery mode)
root		(hd0,5)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=efd264eb-0f54-4d58-953a-d89a85a696e4 ro single 
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic

title		Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
root		(hd0,5)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=efd264eb-0f54-4d58-953a-d89a85a696e4 ro quiet splash pci=routeirq
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic
quiet

title		Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic (recovery mode)
root		(hd0,5)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=efd264eb-0f54-4d58-953a-d89a85a696e4 ro single
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic

Reboot, and hopefully you'll have USB working again. If it causes problems, then you can restore the old menu.lst with

sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst.bak /boot/grub/menu.lst

Here is the bug report.