What sort of transfer rates are typical for 1TB My Passport?

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

My wife just purchased a new 1TB My Passport portable drive and I’ve been concerned about what I saw as slow transfer rates. Part of the problem is that I’ve mistakenly thought the theoretical top end of USB 2.0 and USB 2.0 drives was 480 Megabytes per second. Later I realized it was actually 480 Megabits per second, or 60 Megabytes per second.

Now my slow speeds don’t seem nearly as slow. When transferring large files or a large batch of files we’re seeing speed fluctuate between 18 and 25 Megabytes per second and averaging around 20, or about a third of theoretical speed. We see the same whether through a USB extension or using only the supplied cable on any of three different computers so I feel that these numbers are fairly consistant for this drive. Are these pretty typical numbers? Have any of you seen much better?

Anyway, I guess I’m not as upset now that I know what I’m looking at but I’m curious if this is in line with what others are seeing when using on USB 2.0

Thanks to anyone willing to take the time to reply.

Sincerely,

  • Byron Followell
2

That seems to be about the real speed on USB 2. The listed speeds are more theoretical than actual. A lot of things can impact the speed like AV and antispyware software and the speed of the drive you are transfering from.

Joe

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