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USB speeds are consistently slow in ubuntu, and have been for years. I just bought two new machines with usb 3.0, running 10.04, and yet nothing has changed, top speeds are only about 8.0 MB per second and they quickly drop to 2 or less. Its very frustrating.

Are there any fixes for this at all? I find almost nothing online.

The board is a gigabyte 970A-DS3 motherboard. Is there any driver I should install? I am using brand new usb sticks (kingston) and making sure to plug into the 3.0 (blue) slot.

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  • I rather doubt 10.04 supports USB3 at all. Try a more recent release, perhaps even 12.04 daily, or wait for April 26th. Apr 13, 2012 at 0:44
  • Ubuntu has supported USB 3.0 since Karmic @mike ( askubuntu.com/questions/12139/does-ubuntu-support-usb-3-0 )
    – Rinzwind
    Apr 13, 2012 at 0:48
  • You do realize you need to plug something in that supports USB 3.0 for it to run at USB 3.0 speeds? Can you provide relevant parts of dmesg, sudo lspci -v and lsusb to provide details on your system and details on what you plugged into your system? USB 3.0 is working perfectly for me :) :) (though I do use 12.04 ;))
    – Rinzwind
    Apr 13, 2012 at 0:49
  • @mikewhatever: 10.04 is an LTS, and provides new kernels, so it has up to date hardware support. 12.04 will get fresh hardware support for the first two years. I'm not sure how long 10.04 got updated hardware. The latest is Linux 3.0.0-17 Apr 13, 2012 at 1:03
  • Could you update your question to include the output of lsusb with the drive plugged in, and sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sdX against the drive? Apr 13, 2012 at 2:53

2 Answers 2

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It is not a general true that USB is slow in Ubuntu. It's not even common. Actually, I think, this is the first I've heard of it.

I use a different computer than you do. So does most other people. Have you told anyone that it's slow on your computer? Because nobody can fix problems if they don't know you have one. And noone can provide a precise answer to this without knowing what computer you have, or what you've done to fix it.

It does, however, sound like a driver issue. You can try to install the latest kernel: http://apt.ubuntu.com/p/linux-image-3.0.0-17-generic. This will not remove the old kernel, so it's completely safe to install it. You'll still be able to boot to the old kernel. It'll be added to your boot menu.

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  • Thanks I am using the pae kernel, totally updated. So I doubt this is the problem.
    – RhZ
    Apr 13, 2012 at 1:25
  • There are different versions of the kernel. They're all updated, but not with new features. You have to install a new version. Apr 13, 2012 at 16:02
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That is quite different from what I experienced (on 11.10). I was trying to compare performance between ntfs vs. ext4fs and did some tests yesterday. For a directory of 1.9GB digital pictures, it takes about 12 seconds to copy to an external usb3 hard drive. Which comes to about 150MB/s. By the way, ntfs and ext4fs takes roughly same amount of time.

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  • My home computer is 11.10. Same problem. Terribly slow. Its got a different motherboard than mentioned above and I would rather fix the newer one first. Although I suspect the problem is not mobo-specific...
    – RhZ
    Apr 13, 2012 at 1:31

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