I had similar problems and asked a similar question a while ago and got
2 responses: (1) firewire works really well on freebsd; (2) usb
performance varies a lot by chipset. Both are true in my experience.
Unless you have the skills and knowledge to help the developers improve
performance for your chipset, I don't know of a more useful answer. If
you find one, please post!

dewd writes:

> I'm using FreeBSD 6.1 i386.
> AMD64 3200+, 1.5GB RAM, ASUS A8S-X mobo, verbatim 512MB usb memory stick.
> It took about 5 minutes to write about 50MB of data (in one zip file).
> This seems really bad (it takes a few seconds in winxp/debian). Could I do
> anything to speed things up?

Well, to start with, make sure it's being recognized as USB 2.
Although even with USB 1.0, that's awfully slow.
I've never seen write performance anything like that slow on any setup...

Lowell Gilbert wrote:
> dewd writes:
>
> Well, to start with, make sure it's being recognized as USB 2.
> Although even with USB 1.0, that's awfully slow.
> I've never seen write performance anything like that slow on any setup...

msdosfs is awfully slow on FreeBSD.

--

Michel TALON

In article <44bqmi4cp7.fsf@be-well.ilk.org>,
Lowell Gilbert wrote:
>dewd writes:
>
>> I'm using FreeBSD 6.1 i386.
>> AMD64 3200+, 1.5GB RAM, ASUS A8S-X mobo, verbatim 512MB usb memory stick.
>> It took about 5 minutes to write about 50MB of data (in one zip file).
>> This seems really bad (it takes a few seconds in winxp/debian). Could I do
>> anything to speed things up?
>
>Well, to start with, make sure it's being recognized as USB 2.
>Although even with USB 1.0, that's awfully slow.
>I've never seen write performance anything like that slow on any setup...

And there are two speed specs for USB2. One is full-speed, the
other is high-speed. Full speed is only 12Mb/sec while high
is 400Mb/sec. That naming convention is surely counter-intuitive - and who
knows - maybe it was set that way by vendors who couldn't make
things run as fast as they could. :-) or :-( [pick one].

I've purposely avoided USB in favor of fire-wire for things that
need the speed. Printers can usually live even on USB 1 with no
performance hits, but that's not true for most other devices.

Bill

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 11:29:40 +0100, dewd wrote:

> I'm using FreeBSD 6.1 i386.
> AMD64 3200+, 1.5GB RAM, ASUS A8S-X mobo, verbatim 512MB usb memory stick.
> It took about 5 minutes to write about 50MB of data (in one zip file).
> This seems really bad (it takes a few seconds in winxp/debian). Could I do
> anything to speed things up?

I think that might be typical for USB 1.1. Remember, the speed between 1.1
and 2.0 differs by a factor of 40. (I discovered in this way that my USB
hub was USB 1.1.)

--
Robert T. Kopp
http://analytic.tripod.com/

In article ,
Robert Kopp wrote:
>On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 11:29:40 +0100, dewd wrote:
>
>> I'm using FreeBSD 6.1 i386.
>> AMD64 3200+, 1.5GB RAM, ASUS A8S-X mobo, verbatim 512MB usb memory stick.
>> It took about 5 minutes to write about 50MB of data (in one zip file).
>> This seems really bad (it takes a few seconds in winxp/debian). Could I do
>> anything to speed things up?
>
>I think that might be typical for USB 1.1. Remember, the speed between 1.1
>and 2.0 differs by a factor of 40. (I discovered in this way that my USB
>hub was USB 1.1.)

It only differes by a factor of 40 for ONE of the USB2 specs. See
my previous post on the speed differences. The slowest of the two
USB 2 speeds is about the same as USB 1

Bill

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

dewd wrote:
> I'm using FreeBSD 6.1 i386.
> AMD64 3200+, 1.5GB RAM, ASUS A8S-X mobo, verbatim 512MB usb memory stick.
> It took about 5 minutes to write about 50MB of data (in one zip file).
> This seems really bad (it takes a few seconds in winxp/debian). Could I do
> anything to speed things up?

I write GB of data to various memory keys daily
- backing up XP various machines prior to re-loading (to get rid of
viral gunk)

I've not yet seen an XP machine write 50Mb of data in 'seconds'
including fast new dual core systems (NOT that the CPU/ speed will make
much difference!)
Let's be realistic USB 1/2 ain't the fastest thing on earth!

No doubt there may be some difference in support (speed) for chipsets
under FreeBSD.

I've been using FreeBSD and Windows XP and some form of Linux with keys
for some time on different machines.
I don't have to wait for the O/S to ask if I want to play movies, music
etc or just open the B. folder so I find FreeBSD is quicker...


Bill
AMD-64 Mepis Linux

On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:29:40 -0000, dewd wrote:

> I'm using FreeBSD 6.1 i386.
> AMD64 3200+, 1.5GB RAM, ASUS A8S-X mobo, verbatim 512MB usb memory stick.
> It took about 5 minutes to write about 50MB of data (in one zip file).
> This seems really bad (it takes a few seconds in winxp/debian). Could I
> do
> anything to speed things up?

Thanks for your replies so far. I have some statistics to mull over.
A 143M file copies from my fbsd partition to the usb drive (fat32) at
~500KB/s (according to mc).
The same file copies from the usb drive to fbsd at ~3.75 MB/s.
Do you think formatting the usb stick as UFS would help speed things up?
(I dont need to share the data).

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

dewd wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:29:40 -0000, dewd wrote:
>
> > I'm using FreeBSD 6.1 i386.
> > AMD64 3200+, 1.5GB RAM, ASUS A8S-X mobo, verbatim 512MB usb memory stick.
> > It took about 5 minutes to write about 50MB of data (in one zip file).
> > This seems really bad (it takes a few seconds in winxp/debian). Could I
> > do
> > anything to speed things up?
>
> Thanks for your replies so far. I have some statistics to mull over.
> A 143M file copies from my fbsd partition to the usb drive (fat32) at
> ~500KB/s (according to mc).
> The same file copies from the usb drive to fbsd at ~3.75 MB/s.
> Do you think formatting the usb stick as UFS would help speed things up?
> (I dont need to share the data).
>

Personnally i had years ago a ZIP drive(*). When formatted as msdosfs it
was extremely slow under FreeBSD to transfer files, ways slower than the
nominal speed of the drive. Under Linux it had normal speed. When
formatted as UFS it has more or less normal speed under FreeBSD, so yes,
i suspect that formatting as UFS will solve at least part of the
problem. Msdosfs is abysmally slow under FreeBSD, and it is particularly
noticeable when the underlying medium is slow. I suspect that msdos
filesystems are read and written with a small block size and in very
synchronous mode, so that the system is flooded with interrupts. Looking
with systat, i have seen that indeed this was the case with my ZIP
drive. An interesting experiment you can do is trying to read and write
with dd on your raw device (if you don't fear destroying the
formatting), and varying the block size, from 512B to 64k. Look at the
same time with systat (:vmstat) and observe the number of transactions
per second, and of kilobytes per transaction, and the number of
interrupts on the device. You will be enlighted.

(*) an SCSI ZIP drive, plugged on an SCSI card, so this is not an
artefact of the parallel port driver (vpo).

--

Michel TALON

dewd wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:29:40 -0000, dewd wrote:
>
> > I'm using FreeBSD 6.1 i386.
> > AMD64 3200+, 1.5GB RAM, ASUS A8S-X mobo, verbatim 512MB usb memory stick.
> > It took about 5 minutes to write about 50MB of data (in one zip file).
> > This seems really bad (it takes a few seconds in winxp/debian). Could I
> > do
> > anything to speed things up?
>
> Thanks for your replies so far. I have some statistics to mull over.
> A 143M file copies from my fbsd partition to the usb drive (fat32) at
> ~500KB/s (according to mc).
> The same file copies from the usb drive to fbsd at ~3.75 MB/s.
> Do you think formatting the usb stick as UFS would help speed things up?
> (I dont need to share the data).
>

Personnally i had years ago a ZIP drive(*). When formatted as msdosfs it
was extremely slow under FreeBSD to transfer files, ways slower than the
nominal speed of the drive. Under Linux it had normal speed. When
formatted as UFS it has more or less normal speed under FreeBSD, so yes,
i suspect that formatting as UFS will solve at least part of the
problem. Msdosfs is abysmally slow under FreeBSD, and it is particularly
noticeable when the underlying medium is slow. I suspect that msdos
filesystems are read and written with a small block size and in very
synchronous mode, so that the system is flooded with interrupts. Looking
with systat, i have seen that indeed this was the case with my ZIP
drive. An interesting experiment you can do is trying to read and write
with dd on your raw device (if you don't fear destroying the
formatting), and varying the block size, from 512B to 64k. Look at the
same time with systat (:vmstat) and observe the number of transactions
per second, and of kilobytes per transaction, and the number of
interrupts on the device. You will be enlightned.

(*) an SCSI ZIP drive, plugged on an SCSI card, so this is not an
artefact of the parallel port driver (vpo).

--

Michel TALON