Xfer times

[Micheal McAlexander]

Hey all,

New to the Flash XDR world. I just got my Lexar CF drives and the Transcend 32GB 133x cards.

I've been transferring some files on my Mac Pro to see how the file transfer rates are - is this a normal result?

30GB or files ---> Transcend 32GB 133x = 50 minutes xfer time or 1.6 minutes/GB

Do these xfer times seem okay?

Cheers,

Micheal

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Michael,

Did you get the Lexar Firewire 800 CompactFlash card drive?

Are you using the Firewire 800 or the Firewire 400 connection?

If you are using Firewire 800, you limiting factor is probably the speed of the hard drives in your computer.

What type of hard drives are you using, are they ATA or SATA? Are they 7200 rpm drives?

Any information about your computer hard drives would help.

We do recommend SATA II hard drives as they are faster than the alternatives.

[Micheal McAlexander]

Lexar Pro CF Reader (Firewire 800) plugged into a FireWire 800 port into MacPro with Western Digital SATA II drive @ 7200RPM 8MB cache

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Michael,

Thank you for the additional information.

I will discuss this with our experts and get back with you.

[Micheal McAlexander]

some additional info...

the first drive was not WD but Seagate... 250gb, SATA II 7200 rpm, 8mb cache and the MacPro is running Tiger 10.4.11 - on this I was getting xfer time of 1.6 minutes/GB

I took it to another computer - WD drive, 250Gb, SATA II, 7200 rpm, 8mb cache but this one is running Leopard 10.5.6 - on this one I was getting about 1 min/GB xfer speed

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Michael,

Two items to consider:

1. The Lexar Firewire CF reader is currently the best way to transfer files. However, Firewire is slowed down if there are other devices on the Firewire bus, especially if they are active.

2. The Macintosh slows down as your disk gets full.
This could be the reason why you are seeing different average transfer times.

Your 1 minute per GB is approximately 16.6 megabytes per second.

On a well performing computer, we expect 25 to 30 megabytes per second.

It is best to have a separate hard disk, separate from your operating system, to achieve high transfer rates.

Are you transferring to your operating system (boot) drive?

Do you have anything else on the Firewire bus?

Are your drives full?

[Paul Bryer]

We've been copying some files about this morning. Copying 29GB of files from one CF card over to an external hard drive took approximately 22 minutes. We've only recently got the Lexar FW800 readers and they're really, really good! They're an essential bit of kit in my humble opinion.

For anyone who's interested my set up is as follows:
-2.16GHz Intel Core Duo Macbook Pro with 2GB RAM
-4x Lexar UDMA FW800 card readers, daisy-chained and connected to the FW800 port
-Lacie 120GB, 5400rpm, 8MB cache rugged external hard drive with 75GB free space, connected to the FW400 port.
-Transcend 133x 32GB CompactFlash card

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Paul,

Thank you for posting your setup and transfer times.

We agree completely, the Lexar is a great device, and the ability to stack drives is very convenient.

[Micheal McAlexander]

I should mention when I was xfering the 30GB and getting 22 minutes it was to an external harddrive that was only half full...

I just xferred a 22GB file to an internal HD (not the boot drive) that is only half full and it xferred in only 9 minutes - so that was .4 minutes/GB or about 41MB/sec - I think. I always get confused with the whole MB vs Mb per sec stuff hahaha

Bottom line... I think my system is acting normally based on all the comments I've read thus far

Thanks a bunch guys (and gals)

Micheal

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Michael,

That sounds better and more in line with what we see in our testing.