File copy to NTFS formatted USB device very slow

Bug #213995 reported by Neil Burlock
24
This bug affects 4 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Ubuntu
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned
Nominated for Intrepid by goto

Bug Description

I've recently purchased a 16GB USB flash drive. Under windows it has a write speed of 5.2MB/s, however under Hardy Beta, it starts off at about 2.5MB/s after mounting, and gradually slows down as more data is copied to it, either as a single large file or as many small files, whether copied individually or in batches. I just copied a 4.4GB file to the device and it took over two hours . Copying a similar 4.4GB file to the device under Windows XP takes about 15 minutes.

After un-mounting then re-mounting, copying a 700MB file to it finishes in under 10 minutes. Each time I re-mount the device, a new folder appears under /media, which has the name of the flash drive with an underscore appended. After mounting the device, then un-mounting and re-mounting it twice, there are three folders under media, called "UbuntuStuff", "UbuntuStuff_" and "UbuntuStuff__"

Description: Ubuntu hardy (development branch)
Release: 8.04

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Neil Burlock (malone) wrote :
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Neil Burlock (malone) wrote : dmesg
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Neil Burlock (malone) wrote : lspci -vvnn
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Neil Burlock (malone) wrote :

I've since noticed that this problem is also affecting network transfers - file copies across ethernet bottom out at 5MB/s, which, although better than the sub 1MB/s I get on my flash drive, is still very frustrating. On the plus side, the release candidate of Hardy allows file copies to work at full speed for a couple of minutes before the degradation kicks in, so if I'm fast, I can get my copying done.

My server is a DNS-323. and I'm mounting it as nfs, not using Samba.

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flexR (partner55105605) wrote :

i tried copying to a usb harddisk (ext3).
It starts fast, but slows down after about 70Mb, then stops, copies like 10mb, waits for 10 sec, etc.
cpu is 100%
it took like 5 min to copy 400Mb. (tried it several times, with different files)

2.6.24-17-generic

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Clayton Smith (argilo) wrote :

I've been seeing this problem too. I'm using a 32 GB USB flash drive. I formatted it as NTFS so I could put files bigger than 4GB on it. But copying to the drive was painfully slow. It took me over an hour to copy 4 GB to it. Then I reformatted it as FAT32 and was able to copy 4 GB in under ten minutes. On Windows, copying is fast regardless of the file system.

I'm not sure why this is marked as a duplicate of #197762.

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giovani (wejick-gmail) wrote :

I have hardy clean installation with reiserfs filesystem and a kingston USB flasdisk with fat32 fs. I copy 159MB file from Flashdisk to /home/user it took me over 10 minutes. My machine is good enough with p4 2.6 ang 512 MB RAM, in slackware the copy paste operation is fast enough.

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Bais (bais) wrote :

I have same problem with hp compaq 8710w with Jaunty 64 bit installed. Not only with usb flash but with USB hd too.
I think its about memory cache, I notice a strange process, it's fast at begin and slowly at end... an agony to backup my mails... and pictures!

I'm using MidnightCommander atm... because copy & paste it's very slow

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polfilm (polfilm) wrote :

x86_64 on interepid 8.10. still happening. copy using gui to ntfs formatted usb.

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in ubuntu:
status: New → Confirmed
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