Comment 101 for bug 197762

This bug it not hardware specific. I got 4 different PCs here that have been purchased over the last 5 years. 2 Dells, 1 HP, and 1 Gateway. Some have single processors, some have dual core, some are intel some are AMD, some have nvidia some have ati, some have integrated intel video cards.

All 4 experience this bug! The transfer speed on my newest dual core intel desktop (Dell that came with Ubuntu pre-installed) drops down to 200 Kb/S pretty quickly. This is after the first 60 MB is copied in 3 seconds! and then the speed slowly drops to 200 KB, and it takes hours to copy files that are several gigs in size! Rebooting my PC sometimes (but rarely) helps. If I'm lucky, after the reboot, for the first 2 GB the speed would be 15-20 MB/S, but then it would drop down to 200 KB/s. This is if I'm lucky. If I'm not lucky the fast speed lasts only for the first 50-100 MB, and then its the wait game all over again. 90% of the time - I'm not lucky.

I am a software developer, and a math guy. Statistics and experience tells me that this bug is experienced by majority of people out there (What are the odds that I have 4 different machines purchased over the years with different hardware from different manufacturers and ALL of them experience the same "rare" bug?). The bug is probably severely underreported because most people don't copy huge files over the USB 2.0. I didn't have a need to do this until now when i decided to start backing up my video/music/high-res pictures. If I only used my USB drive to copy 50 MB or smaller files every now and then - i would've never noticed the performance issue.