# External USB 3.0 Harddrive slow (NTFS)



## brOOper (Jul 6, 2012)

I used an external harddrive (usb 2) formated NTFS which was running fine. I recently bought a new harddrive which is usb 3.0, formated NTFS as well. Now, my new harddrive is very slow. Copying items takes up to four times longer than it used to with usb 2.
Why is that? Any ideas?


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## djackmac (Jul 6, 2012)

What brand is the usb3.0 drive? I've personally seen issues with the current Toshiba usb3.0 drives and Apple laptops. I've also seen online it's a known issue for just about all portables that there was no solution for (at the time). There was a couple workarounds for either using a powered usb hub or  using a micro usb connection as opposed to the usb3.0 cable, but I personally tried both with a couple diferent drives and those workarounds fell flat for me and many others. Haven't checked in a while to see if there has been a solution (like maybe upgraded firmeware?). I moved onto seeling drives that worked instead of the Toshibas.


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## brOOper (Jul 9, 2012)

djackmac said:


> What brand is the usb3.0 drive?


I have a WD Elements. I'll check if there's a firmware upgrade yet...


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## DeltaMac (Jul 9, 2012)

Which Mac are you using with that USB 3 drive?


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## brOOper (Jul 9, 2012)

It's an iMac 27" with i7 processor. I bought it 3 years ago. OS is still Snow Leopard.


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## DeltaMac (Jul 9, 2012)

Although some USB 3 drives test somewhat faster on USB 2 ports - you still have only a USB 2.0 bus. Plugging in a USB 3 device does not, somehow, give you USB 3 speeds. The internal bus remains USB 2, and you can't change that with an external device.
But, then it would be nice to even have USB 2 speeds, for sure!

Perhaps there will be some improvement to file copy speeds if you erase the drive, and change it over to a Mac OS Extended format, using your Disk Utility.

Finally, if you are using NTFS drives, then you must have installed an NTFS driver. Perhaps the drop in performance is caused by the NTFS driver that you are using.
If it's the free NTFS-3G, then that's known to have poor performance, compared to full speed drivers, such as the commercial Tuxera NTFS driver. http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33122/tuxera-ntfs
If you need to continue to have the drive formatted NTFS (because you need to share with Windows, for example), then the commercial NTFS driver may help, assuming you don't have that paid-for driver yet.


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## brOOper (Jul 10, 2012)

DeltaMac said:


> Perhaps there will be some improvement to file copy speeds if you erase the drive, and change it over to a Mac OS Extended format, using your Disk Utility.


Unfortunately, that's not an option! I'm using the disk as media disk for my TV (Samsung). The TV does only support NTFS and FAT where only NTFS is supporting large files.

I installed the NTFS driver on my Mac a loooong time ago. How do I find out which driver I'm using?


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## DeltaMac (Jul 10, 2012)

You can probably see which in your System Preferences.
The NTFS-3G install gives you 2 panes in System Preferences: An NTFS-3G pane, and a MacFuse pane.
Do you see those panes in your System Preferences?
That's the free software from Tuxera. Upgrading to the "real" Tuxera NTFS software gives you much improved NTFS performance, and is not free. http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/
If you have the free NTFS software, upgrading to the commercial version will likely give you the speed that you are expecting.
Just don't expect USB 3 speeds: not going to happen until you upgrade a Mac with USB 3 ports.


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