Just a quick update: The utility whose name I could not remember is HD_Speed. It is a free utility available from SteelBytes.com
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Surprise, surprise. It delivers nowhere near the speeds it promised. 5 GB/s? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! You're killing me <holding sides> :- |
Installation was simple, as I expected. I had to slightly modify the mounting bracket on the card (which required the judicious use of a pair of channel-locks). I bent the bracket upwards just a hair because when I screwed it down, the last peg of contacts pulled out of the PCIE x1 slot. Odd.
A couple of points:
*I did have to use the molex power connector, which required some creative re-wiring. The external would not recognize on my system until I did.
*I also had to install the included drivers. Someone had posted they did not need the drivers but the card came up as unknown in my Device Manager.
Strangely enough, I found 4 USB 2.0 ports I didn't remember I even had via the main board connection to a slot-mounted bracket. I removed it to free up the power connection. I 2also took advantage of the opportunity and cleaned a ton of dust out of my case and components.
Here are my results. (Yours, of course, may differ)
My desktop specs follow:
Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L LGA 775 main board
Intel Q9550 Core2Quad CPU Overclocked to 3.5 GHz
4 GB Kingston 800 MHz DDR2 RAM
700 W PNY PSU
Windows 7 SP1 64-bit
I downloaded some little free utility, the name of which for the life of me I cannot remember (and now cannot even find on my system).
I compared write tests between:
1) (G: Drive) My brand new WD MyBook 2.0 TB USB 3.0 External
2) (C: drive) WD Raptor 10K RPM SATA II 500 GB
3) (F: drive) Seagate 5400 RPM SATA II 320 GB
The results:
G: = max ~135 MB/s and ~109 MB/s average
C: = max ~170 MB/s and avg 131 MB/s
F: = max 97 MB/s and avg 91 MB/s
I did not compare it to a USB 2.0 port yet because I just really didn't feel like contorting myself again to get behind my tower.
I also tested the same drives using WINSAT.exe in Windows 7. Once I figured out the syntax (it's been a very long time since I've used DOS for anything besides ipconfig) BTW from an Administrator Command Prompt it's: winsat disk -seq -write -n X :where "X" is the disk number you get from Disk Management.
G: = 95 MB/s
C: = 133 MB/s
F: = 65 MB/s
Read tests were ~5% slower on C: and G: but almost dead equal on F:. As you can see, other than the Raptor, WINSAT was not very kind. In "real" time (how long it SEEMS to take) the speed isn't too terribly bad. I'm in the process of backing everything up to reinstall a dual boot of 7 and 8 just for the hell of it. I'm even thinking of tri-booting with Ubuntu to just make my life really interesting.
Anyway, F: is my music hard drive which contains just over 280 GB of my eclectic collection of just about every kind of music you could possibly want in .mp3, .flac and .ogg formats. That took about 40 minutes to move over to the external.
My E: drive (WD Caviar SATA II 500 GB) has my movie collection (390 GB- ~70% AVI to 30% ISO) took just over an hour to migrate.
In closing, all in all, it's OK. Not a great product but not horrible, either. Just like most things you buy nowadays, as long as you have reasonable expectations and don't buy into the hype, you won't be too disappointed.
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 2 |
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