P2 Store's technical problems - USB speed etc.

S

Saddler

Well-known member
I have my P2 store connected to my G5 via a USB 2.0 cable, but when I transfer files from it to my XServe RAID, it takes about 10 minutes per GB. I thought USB 2.0 was supposed to be nearly as fast as 1394a - about 1GB/minute. Any tips?

Also, is it better to copy files off the P2 Store one folder at a time so that the drive isn 't having to jump all over the place to simultaneously transfer multiple folders?

And what's the covered hole on the left side for, venting?

Lastly, when I copy files over to my XServe RAID sometimes it says "not enough free space on drive". I have 2.5 TB free....
 
hey. i switched to the p2 genie, so haven't done a manual transfer in a while, but...if i remember correctly, it made a dramatic dif'c in speed if you copied the .txt file first, and then the other material, vs just simultaneously dragging them over. know what i mean? hope that helps. also, the p2 genie's pretty helpful if you're doing lots of transfers.

i used to do multiple folders at once, and found it slightly less reliable than doing one at a time. again, the p2 genie will automate that so you don't have to worry. i'm not trying to plug it, it's not a perfect program, but really does help with this stuff.

cheers.

gpl
 
It should take about 11 minutes per 4 gigs. 23 minutes if U use verify ( the little switch under the battery). At least that is what I find and I import the files off the P2 store into FCP which I assume is slower but maybe not.

Dragging the folders is too messy 4 me.
 
holditnowfilms said:
It should take about 11 minutes per 4 gigs. 23 minutes if U use verify ( the little switch under the battery). At least that is what I find and I import the files off the P2 store into FCP which I assume is slower but maybe not.

Dragging the folders is too messy 4 me.
Click to expand...

Something must be wrong with your setup . . . perhaps a USB cable needs to be replaced or something? Not trying to criticise, just thinking out loud.

Your numbers are roughly twice what it takes on any of my three machines (which vary in age and processor speed).

Best.
 
manully dragging from P2 Store to an external FW drive with my MacBook Pro was taking nearly an hour for a full 8gb card. Try P2 Genie and POOF! (he he) Media transfer times plummetted.

nothing else about my setup is different -- same drive, same cable, laptop running of ac not battery, etc.
 
P2Genie

P2Genie

Just gotten P2Genie last night and tested the transfer speed on my laptop.(automatic mode)

I downloaded a full 4 gig P2 onto the laptop drive and it averaged about 4min and 20sec.

I was wondering if there is something to make transfer faster?
What is the estimated transfer speed of a pcmcia port for P2?
 
really sounds like somethings wrong, try transfering the folders seprately, I had one folder I thought maybe it was corrupt becuase it took 30 minutes to transfer it... all the other folders of the same size went very quickly...

chris
 
pinakbeth said:
I was wondering if there is something to make transfer faster?
What is the estimated transfer speed of a pcmcia port for P2?
Click to expand...

For a faster transfer you have to transfer to a faster device. Laptop drives max out at somewhere around 20 megabytes per second (160 megabits per second). That's 1/4 the speed of a P2 card, and about 1/10 the speed of the PCMCIA port.

Transfer via FW800 to a G-Raid and you should be able to get significantly faster transfers. Transfer via SATA to a 5-disk SATA RAID and you should be able to offload a 4gb card in less than a minute.
 
For a faster transfer you have to transfer to a faster device. Laptop drives max out at somewhere around 20 megabytes per second (160 megabits per second). That's 1/4 the speed of a P2 card, and about 1/10 the speed of the PCMCIA port.

Transfer via FW800 to a G-Raid and you should be able to get significantly faster transfers. Transfer via SATA to a 5-disk SATA RAID and you should be able to offload a 4gb card in less than a minute.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info on transfer options. It was info I have been trying to find for the past 6 hrs. I had a feeling that my laptop harddrive was slow for transferring, just needed confirmation.


Thanks again I appreciate it alot.
 
Pinkabeth,

I think Barry has inadvertantly reassured you here, the slowest harddrive on earth shouldnt take 10minutes to write a gig of data. 600min to transfer 60gb of data from a p2 store is waaay over what it should be. Laptop harddrives should still handle data at about a gig a minute.

My own experience with USB2 is that it is no where near as fastr as fw800. Look hard at your setup, something is amiss and its not the speed of your harddrive.
 
Idea:

The intermittent false "full" message you are getting from the XServe Raid sounds like the Raid is in contention with the P2 Store for a resource. In other words, it sounds like the XServe is getting starved out for CPU or for data path bandwidth (USB? Backplane? Memory Access Bandwidth?) when the P2 Store is transferring data.

I don't know how the Raid is attached. If its on USB ...well... you need to try to isolate them from one another on separate cards/interfaces. If the Raid is attached by a card inside the computer, then the race condition for resources is probably internal to the computer.

Try copying from the P2 to the C:\ drive. Check the speed/time. Then copy from the C:\drive to the Raid and check its speed and time. That might help isolate the problem to one side (input or output). If they are both performing well, then its the race between them for some resource that is likely the problem.
 
Richard Sutcliffe said:
Pinkabeth,

I think Barry has inadvertantly reassured you here, the slowest harddrive on earth shouldnt take 10minutes to write a gig of data.
Click to expand...
I was responding to this quote from pinkabeth:
"I downloaded a full 4 gig P2 onto the laptop drive and it averaged about 4min and 20sec."

That's about a gig a minute, which is about typical for a laptop.

If anyone's getting 10 minutes per gig, that's completely unacceptable and means there's something wrong somewhere.
 
Saddler said:
I have my P2 store connected to my G5 via a USB 2.0 cable, but when I transfer files from it to my XServe RAID, it takes about 10 minutes per GB. I thought USB 2.0 was supposed to be nearly as fast as 1394a - about 1GB/minute. Any tips?

I guessed as much from your post. 10mins a gig copying to a raid drive???
Click to expand...
 
Better transfer speed

Better transfer speed

Well I have been playing around with the pagefile and I got a positive return by using a pagefile on my external drive and disabling it on the systems drive.

The reason is that after experimenting between saving to external and internal I have concluded that saving to my internal has been faster. I guess my external harddrive has a slower interface.

Anyways I am now transferring a full 4gig P2 card at 3min and 40sec. Shaving off about 40 seconds.

Atleast now I can record 4minutes of 1080 onto 1 4gig P2 while transferring from another to laptop . Now its possible to cycle both of my P2 card in my workflow. I just have to move fast while transferring my P2.

BTW, Richard , I didn't say it took me 10 mins to transfer 1 gig.

If there is anymore I can do to increase transfer speed , please let me know.

Thanks.
 
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