Server 2003 slow copying from external drives

[Jim Hubbard]

I just re-installed SBS 2003 when the drives in the RAID array failed. I
rebuilt it without a RAID.

I am experiencing excrutiatingly slow copying from external USB drives. All
Windows freeze while copying a large file (2GB+) from the external drive to
the C drive.

I have tried more than one external drive to eliminate drive problems as a
cause.

I have scanned the c: drive (chkdsk /R /X c:) for errors and found none.

Copying from internal drive to internal drive does not cause the freezing or
very slow copy speeds.

This is a Dell Poweredge sc420 with dual Hitachi 500 GB drives and 1 GB RAM.

I have searched the web over but have yet to find a solution.

Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

[Phillip Windell]

Post by Jim Hubbard
I just re-installed SBS 2003 when the drives in the RAID array failed. I
rebuilt it without a RAID.

Rebuilt without RAID,...that was a big mistake. RAID is the only thing that
is going to save your rearend in the event of a drive failure, that most
certaily *will* happen eventually,..it is inevitable. Considering that SBS
is a horrible mess when it comes to Disaster Recovery because of its design,
that's make the RAID even more important.

Post by Jim Hubbard
I am experiencing excrutiatingly slow copying from external USB drives.
All
Windows freeze while copying a large file (2GB+) from the external drive to
the C drive.

USB drives are slow,...always have been. If the USB port you plug into is
not a USB version 2.0 then it will be even worse.

[Jim Hubbard]

Post by Phillip Windell

Post by Jim Hubbard
I just re-installed SBS 2003 when the drives in the RAID array failed. I
rebuilt it without a RAID.

Rebuilt without RAID,...that was a big mistake. RAID is the only thing that
is going to save your rearend in the event of a drive failure, that most
certaily *will* happen eventually,..it is inevitable. Considering that SBS
is a horrible mess when it comes to Disaster Recovery because of its design,
that's make the RAID even more important.

Post by Jim Hubbard
I am experiencing excrutiatingly slow copying from external USB drives.
All
Windows freeze while copying a large file (2GB+) from the external drive to
the C drive.

USB drives are slow,...always have been. If the USB port you plug into is
not a USB version 2.0 then it will be even worse.

Even if they were pre-2.0 USB ports, that would not explain everything else
onscreen freezing while you copy data from an external drive.

[Phillip Windell]

Post by Jim Hubbard

Post by Phillip Windell

Post by Jim Hubbard
I just re-installed SBS 2003 when the drives in the RAID array failed.
I
rebuilt it without a RAID.

Rebuilt without RAID,...that was a big mistake. RAID is the only thing that
is going to save your rearend in the event of a drive failure, that most
certaily *will* happen eventually,..it is inevitable. Considering that SBS
is a horrible mess when it comes to Disaster Recovery because of its design,
that's make the RAID even more important.

Post by Jim Hubbard
I am experiencing excrutiatingly slow copying from external USB drives.
All
Windows freeze while copying a large file (2GB+) from the external
drive
to
the C drive.

USB drives are slow,...always have been. If the USB port you plug into is
not a USB version 2.0 then it will be even worse.

Even if they were pre-2.0 USB ports, that would not explain everything else
onscreen freezing while you copy data from an external drive.

I had this happen (still happening) when a machine had an add-on USB Card
for v2.0 and the USB Drives were Western Digital "My Book" 1tb drives. The
server did not actually freeze,...the processes just took all the resources
of the server to the point that it would not even respond to any network
access to the machine from Clients either.

Have never solved that one. These drives are used to do backups, so we had
to schedule them to always run late at night when nothing else was using the
machine. Sometimes the WD drive would crap out and Windows would think they
were not even partitioned,...re-partition, re-format gets tham going
again,...until it happens again later. Was planning to try a different
brand/model of USB drive but that has not happend yet (not up to me to buy
the other drives and no one has done it). Personally I suspect it was the
add-on USB card that was the problem but the person in charge doesn't think
so, so that therory has never been tested.

[Phillip Windell]

I recently ran into a couple situations where the "onboard" USB ports were
not version 2.0 but they had an additonal USB Card in the machine which was
Version 2.0,...so it really mattered which USB port I plugged into
concerning speed.

[FoxfireGoss]

We just replaced our USB backup devices with eSATA drives. This in a Dell PE
2800, dual, dual cord Xeon, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise, 16GB RAM, 8 300GB
Ultra SCSI drives in a RAID 5. Our backup times on the 3 USB devices was
~27.5 hours (backing up 2.5TB on 6 servers) On 2 eSATA drives it is now
~11.5 hours!

BUT, I found out something else. Having 3 USB drives connected to this
server - WITHOUT ANYTHING being read or written to them, slowed this system
down. And with the backup processes running, quite slugish. It is now more
responsive with the eSATA devices and the backup RUNNING than it was with the
3 USB drives connected and NO backup jobs running.

There is something not so nice that USB drives do to a box!