USB to USB File transfers are extremely slow

[Jim Robert]

Binary package hint: nautilus

The software isn't necessarily *BROKEN*, but I think this still qualifies as a bug:

So you plug 2 USB mass storage devices into the computer and mount them both. You then open both of these devices in nautilus (each in it's own window). Proceed to select a moderately large sum of data (eg. a movie, or a few thousand songs) and copy it. Then Paste these files to the other USB mass storage device. Nautilus will begin copying these files (and the copy will work), but at an extremely slow rate.

I recently had this problem while making a copy of my music library ~80gB Nautilus told me it would take ~30 hours. This is not true; USB 2.0 does not transfer 1 gB/hour. But I let it go overnight and low and behold, the next morning 20 hours remaining.

At this point I cancelled the transfer and copied the files to my internal hard drive (which took about half an hour) and then copied the files from my internal hard drive to the other USB device (which took about 1 hour).

So I think that probably if there is unused space in the swap file, nautilus should copy the files there as an intermediary holding area, and then copy to the other drive. Or maybe these excessively slow speeds actually are a bug. Thanks in advance for being so awesome!

[Jim Robert (jim-jim-robert)]

oops I meant to type:
"USB 2.0 does not transfer 3 gB/hour"

not...
"USB 2.0 does not transfer 1 gB/hour"

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug. What version of Ubuntu do you use? Does it go faster if you close the nautilus windows after starting the copy? Does copying from the command line has the same issue?

[Jim Robert (jim-jim-robert)]

I'm using feisty (7.04). I don't have the both external hard drives any more
(one was a friends), but when I tried to close the nautilus window I got a
"Wait / force quit" dialog and had to force quit because nautilus was
frozen. however, the files continued transferring until I did the force
quit. (the first time I clicked wait, and waited about 20 min, and several
directories of files transferred in that time, though it still proceeded
very slowly.

On 10/3/07, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Thank you for your bug. What version of Ubuntu do you use? Does it go
> faster if you close the nautilus windows after starting the copy? Does
> copying from the command line has the same issue?
>
> ** Changed in: nautilus (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided => Low
> Assignee: (unassigned) => Ubuntu Desktop Bugs (desktop-bugs)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> --
> USB to USB File transfers are extremely slow
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/148266
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Jim Robert (jim-jim-robert)]

so the answer about the CLI is I don't know. sorry, I didn't really finish
that idea.

On 10/3/07, Jim Robert <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> I'm using feisty (7.04). I don't have the both external hard drives any
> more (one was a friends), but when I tried to close the nautilus window I
> got a "Wait / force quit" dialog and had to force quit because nautilus was
> frozen. however, the files continued transferring until I did the force
> quit. (the first time I clicked wait, and waited about 20 min, and several
> directories of files transferred in that time, though it still proceeded
> very slowly.
>
>
> On 10/3/07, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> wrote:
> >
> > Thank you for your bug. What version of Ubuntu do you use? Does it go
> > faster if you close the nautilus windows after starting the copy? Does
> > copying from the command line has the same issue?
> >
> > ** Changed in: nautilus (Ubuntu)
> > Importance: Undecided => Low
> > Assignee: (unassigned) => Ubuntu Desktop Bugs (desktop-bugs)
> > Status: New => Incomplete
> >
> > --
> > USB to USB File transfers are extremely slow
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/148266
> > You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> > of the bug.
> >
>
>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Closing the bug since it lacks details to be useful, feel free to reopen if you have the issue again though

[matthaus (matthaus-woolard)]

take a look at the memory usage while coping a file to usb, nautilus memory usage rises till it reaches 90%, at the same time the speed of file transfer slows down dramticsly,

using 9.10 alpha 3

[Przemek K. (azrael)]

matthaus: your issue is bug #197762.
I'm closing this bug.