Ubuntu – Why is the USB data transfer so slow

usb

Whenever I do any kind of file transfer using USB, whether to a USB stick, or with my Android phone, or anything else, it is ridiculously slow.

enter image description here

It says 59.8 KB/sec, which would be an awesome speed if this were 1991 and I was using a modem to dial up to my local BBS. Surely USB technology is better than that…? 37 seconds to move less data than the equivelent of 1 MP3 file?

Also, regardless of what it says about speed and time, the reality is much, much slower. I routinely see it say something like "37 seconds left" and have to wait for minutes. Sometimes, if I want to move large amounts of files, it can say it will take 8 hours or more.

Is this normal? My computer may not be the most awesome on the market, and about a year old, but it's an i5 with 4GB RAM and modern components, so surely this isn't the hardware's fault.

What can I do to get better USB data transfer performance?

Also, I did look at this question, but my newbie eyes don't see anything that look like an actual solution, just a lot of discussion about what transfer rates could or should be.

Update: As requested in the comments, I've generated a whole bunch of output from the command line, and put it on Ubuntu Pastebin. Please see it here.

I've also posted the output from lsusb -t with my Android phone connected (which is the device I am most concerned about getting reasonable speeds with).

Update 2: As requested in the comments, I removed everything except the mouse and keyboard, and then only attached one extra device at a time for testing. Here is some output from dd:

My Sony video camera:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/disk/testfile bs=128k count=800 conv=fdatasync
800+0 records in
800+0 records out
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 6.00824 s, 17.5 MB/s

My Android phone:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/C3AD-13DC/testfile bs=128k count=800 conv=fdatasync
800+0 records in
800+0 records out
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 52.357 s, 2.0 MB/s

The camera performed much better than usual, and while the phone wasn't as bad as it has been (about twice as fast as I've ever seen), it's still significantly slower than the camera.

Best Answer

After all the diagnostics Dave, this certainly looks like a problem being caused by your hub(s) -- first of all, the USB 1.1 external hub you're using, and possibly one of the internal chips on your motherboard used to provide physical USB ports.

17.5 Mbytes/sec to your Sony Video Camera's flash memory is close to the practical throughput limits of USB 2.0; the 2.0 Mbytes/sec with your Android phone may just be because its flash doesn't support faster writes.
Your motherboard is a Foxconn P55MX, as this clue from dmesg on line 1308 of your paste tells us: DMI: ThirdWave Corporation Prime Series/P55MX Series, BIOS 080015 09/15/2009
The Intel P55 chipset contains two USB 2.0 controllers (or root hubs), providing up to 8 and 6 ports respectively:
```
|__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=hub, Driver=hub/8p, 480M
|__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=hub, Driver=hub/6p, 480M
```
One big problem is this external hub to which you have your mouse/keyboard/tablet connected; it looks like a USB 1.1 hub (or a poorly designed USB 2.0 hub). Connecting the 1.1 hub forces that root hub to downgrade all its ports to USB 1.1 speeds. A USB 2.0 hub contains translators which prevent this behavior:
```
        |__ Port 4: Dev 8, If 0, Class=hub, Driver=hub/4p, 12M
```
The btusb is just a Bluetooth dongle you plugged in.

Anyway, it appears the intermittent problem is caused when something forces the root hub to downgrade all ports to USB 1.0/USB 1.1 speeds -- 60 kbytes/sec is close to real-world USB 1.0 speeds IIRC!

Now, replacing your external hub with a proper USB 2.0 one should fix these problems; if not, something may be wrong with the actual Intel chip on the motherboard or its connection to the physical ports, and you may have to have it replaced under warranty.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – USB data transfer from windows to linux

All of the "Easy Transfer" type USB data transfer cables have their own software that is required for use, either embedded in the devices or coming separately on disk. Examples of these devices include the "Easy Transfer Cable" (Software separate) and a heap of Chinese made devices similar to this one and the Amkette device you have which have the software embedded in the device.

I suspect the embedded software is in the form of an autorun that any Windows machine will start up and run to connect to the computer at the other end, which is also running the same software. Cables sold with the claim that there is "no need to install any software or drivers" simply mean that this is embedded and needs no difficult user intervention to connect two Windows computers.

Alternate methods ranging from a simple ethernet cat 5 crossover cable, large storage USB hard drives, Bluetooth, and of course fully networked groups of machines connected via a router are all so readily available that there just doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in this technology however further research (ie Google) yields the following information:

The setup appears to be what is called "USBnet", which connects two computers together as though connected by ethernet. The only advantage For Ubuntu users that I can see here is if you have a computer with a broken RJ45 ethernet port or card, or if you have a device that doesn't have one but does have a USB port you can use.

Devices that might be compatible: enter image description here

And this would include devices that use the same chip as those listed. I have no idea if the device you have is compatible. This compatibility list is taken directly from linux-usb.org - have a look at this page for more information and instructions.

Further to this, here's some instructions on how this was done on Intrepid Ibis. To quote from message 2:

#On my primary machine with Intrepid, I configured USB0 using
ifconfig usb0 192.168.1.1

#On the other machine also with Intrepid, I configured usb0 using
ifconfig usb0 192.168.1.2

Then in Network Manager:

Select edit connections > Auto usb0 and set a manual IP on both computers, using the same IP as default gateway as well.

It then goes on to give the following instructions for transfer:

Transferring files

Ensure that the Firewall is switched off and you can ping each other
If you can ping, setup an ftp server wu-ftp daemon on any one or both the machines.
Install Filezilla FTP client on both computers
Thats it !! (Really)
start wu-ftp daemon using "sudo wu-ftp" on one machine
use filezilla on the other machine to quickconnect. Use the User ID and password of the host machine you are connecting to.
browse & transfer files

It also gives the warning that the file transfer speed was pretty slow.

Warning to others

Don't be tempted after reading this to plug a normal male-male USB cable into two computers to try it. Such a cable would attach each TX and RX pin in the computers in the wrong order (so it wouldn't work anyway) and more importantly will tie the +5 and grounds of the power supplies together. This can potentially short the two power supplies in a way that can damage them or your computer, and cause other problems up to and including having them burst into flames and burn your house down. (OK, I'm being dramatic here, but it's a really BAD idea to do this)

Ubuntu – IPhone large file transfer via USB on Ubuntu 16.04

You need this : libimobiledevice

This is a cross-platform package which communicates with i-devices and get file-system access (and much more) and needs no jailbreaking.

Most recent version is 1.2.0 and you can read details here: Official page : libimobiledevice.org

Coming to installation, there is already excellent description available here : Mounting i-devices on ubuntu

After mounting your iphone like a USB device, you will be able to access the folders and then your transfer job will be just copy/paste thing.

If you are transferring a video file and it is not recognized by the default video app on iPhone, then the issue is with the file format including bitrate and frames per second. To solve this, one can simply convert to iPhone supported video format easily using Handbrake video encoder.

This application is available in the software repository and installation is easy using the the Software center on 14.04 or Software on 16.04. In the application, choose 'iPhone and iPod touch' shown in Devices menu on the right.

(* Most of the times it is noticed that the file size becomes smaller than original. If you have several files, you can queue them and convert all of them together.)

After the transfer of the files, you need to the Sync the folder where you have placed the file(s) in the particular application, say iTunes to get the new video(s) playable.