[Solved] External USB HDD with gentoo too slow

ade05fr · Apprentice Joined: 18 Sep 2006 Posts: 281

Hello

i have installed gentoo on an external USB HDD but the rate of transfert is incredibly slow
when i do a vi, consult my emails through evolution or navigate everything freeze and my HDD is working all the time.

here is my messages during boot sequence

eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2011 2:28 pm Post subject:

This is indicating you're not using a USB2 capable port on your machine, does your machine have USB2 ports (it should...)?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2011 4:50 pm Post subject:

ade05fr,

To add to what eccerr0r said, you must not mix USB1 and USB2 devices on the same root hub or all devices run at USB1 speeds.
A USB root hub is usually a pair of stacked USB sockets.

USB3 uses the XHCI driver in the kernel. There is no point in using USB3 unless both the drive and motherboard support it.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

ade05fr · Apprentice Joined: 18 Sep 2006 Posts: 281

Thank you for your quick replies

in fact i know my laptop and i have 4 usb 2.0 ports but what is stranger is when i have executed the lsbusb commandline

eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2011 8:23 pm Post subject:

Yes it looks like you have an obscure problem here. Not the fact that it says you have 4 USB1.1 hubs - this is typical, it's talking about internal organization. Most old usb2 machiines have only 1 USB2 root hub that's shared amongst all the ports, newer ones may have more than one.

By your lsusb output, it does appear some EHCI devices were attached. Do other USB ports work for your machine?

Do you have any other USB devices known as USB2, to see what they do to each of your USB ports?

How are you booting this machine as curiosity, though the dmesg output (if both are from the same boot sequence, one from dmesg, other from syslog?) indicates it *should* work as ehci is loaded before the disk is detected...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2011 1:06 am Post subject:

ade05fr,

Please post your /proc/bus/usb/devices file. Its easier to look at your USB device tree from that.
You can look yourself with usbview.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

ade05fr · Apprentice Joined: 18 Sep 2006 Posts: 281

hello

2 things

i have nothing in

cat /proc/bus/usb/devices
cat: /proc/bus/usb/devices: No such file or directory

the devices is not define there.

Other thing. i have a 250Mb USB2 Key that i plug sometimes and it s recognize to be used at full speed.

what else can i do ?
_________________
[LAPTOP]
DELL Inspiron 5110
i5-2450M CPU @ 2.50GHz
[LINUX-GENTOO]
Gentoo 2018-0
kernel 5.0.6
gnome 3.30

ade05fr · Apprentice Joined: 18 Sep 2006 Posts: 281

hie

here is what i have with usb-device commandline

eccerr0r · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2011 5:15 am Post subject:

Not sure if this matters but did you compile in BLK_DEV_UB into the kernel? Probably don't need this option, I never used it...
Honestly I don't know if this option would claim the device as UHCI during boot or not, but just a shot in the dark...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

richard.scott · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2011 2:44 pm Post subject:

I remember this sort of issue when creating a LiveUSB image.

If you compile your USB drivers as modules, then you may get this problem... if you compile them in the kernel, the problem goes away (or it may be the otherway round, I can't remember).

point being, that one way used USB1 drivers over USB2 and the other way was the reverse.

Rich

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2011 8:47 pm Post subject:

ade05fr,

javeree · Guru Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 458

I'm not medling with the detailed posts above, that are probably more to the point than mine, but just wanted to mention that I strugled this weekend with automounted USB sticks (on a USB2 port), where writing a 1Gb file was estimated to take 4 hours. It turned out to be related to the mount option 'sync'.

I had chosen that mount option thinking it was the safer choice (probably still is) in case someone pulls the stick in mid-operation, but this also turns caching off, which seems to be very important.

mounting with 'async' allowed me to write the same file in a few minutes.

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 5:00 pm Post subject:

javeree,

The async option gives you the prompt back when all of the data in in the cache but not yet written to the USB flash.
To see the effect of this, muont with async, do a large copy and as soon as the prompt comes back, issue the umount command.

umount will not return until all of the data has been flushed to the USB device. You will notice the delay.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

javeree · Guru Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 458

@NeddySeagoon

I wasn't copying from command line, but from pcmanfm (that's how I got the estimate (a few hours) for termination of the copy with the sync option). With the async option, the copy was really done when pcmanfm said it was (the couple of minutes I was referring to). I know since I pulled the stick and checked the contents on another PC.

Haven't tried the difference from command line though.

ade05fr · Apprentice Joined: 18 Sep 2006 Posts: 281

hello

for info i have solved my problem with another adapter USB - SATA
the old one was maybe corrupted and now everything is working fine.

thanks for your help
_________________
[LAPTOP]
DELL Inspiron 5110
i5-2450M CPU @ 2.50GHz
[LINUX-GENTOO]
Gentoo 2018-0
kernel 5.0.6
gnome 3.30