Ephpod: typical transfer rate?

[Sam Williams]

Yo; a poll of sorts... Just wondered what sort of transfer rates people were getting with Ephpod. I know the iPod's HDD is generally the limiting factor on the Firewire transfers. I'm talking about the average transfer rate over a long session, not the rate for sending one song to the iPod.

I typically get ~4.7 MB/sec, with some momentary fluctuations.

Post your rate here! Cheers,

S.

[hype]

Usually anywhere from 4.2 - 6.5 MB/s. I think its gone as high as 10 MB/s once.

[Timmy Yak]

I get about the same. Sometimes I will get like 3.2 for a quick sec but then it jumps back up. Normally it's about 4.8 - 5.0.

[Kenny]

I get about 5.5-7.2 MB/S

[seaman]

I get less (b/w 3 and 4) but i am using a 4 pin firewire which, besides being unpowered, is a bit slower.

[lozzd]

i get between 5.5 and 6mb/sec on my audigy firewire, which surprises a lot of people cos some of the audigys dont work at all! :D

[LikeAFox]

I get about a steady transfer of 6.5 -7.5 MB/s, with an occasional peak up to a higer rate.

[akelsall]

umm, when i do a major transfer, it hovers almost exactly on 4mb with ephPod. Is this slower than normal? Could it be that my firewire card is dodgey? I got a $AU60 (about $US30) card sort of generic and cheap "SOHO1394".
Its funny, the little instruction booklet is written by an asian. The english is so bad:
Quote: "The above picture is for reference only. It may be various from different model that your purchased." (*NO spelling mistakes in that from me!)

Anyways, is it just my card making it slow or could it be that it hasn't got enough power in the card? (Power issue explained
here (http://www.ipodlounge.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=2667#post2667) in my post at bottom.)

thanks.

[Sam Williams]

Ah, poorly translated manuals... The bane of the troubled PC user. I wish I had one of my old manuals to hand here - it had some absolute classics (including several mistranslations that actually managed to reverse the meaning of critical instructions). Anyway:

You might be aware that, as a rule, the PCI slots farthest from the AGP slot are the slowest. So, you could try moving the Firewire card closer to the graphics card; might boost the rate.

It seems though that the maximum rate people are posting is only about 50% faster than what you're getting, so unless you're an "everyday syncer" who throws away the iPod's contents and starts from scratch often, I wouldn't worry.

I've actually only loaded my iPod up about four times since purchase; I just dumped all my single tracks and a 'core' of favourite albums onto it and haven't needed to alter much, except adding new tracks here and there. I'm trying to avoid the wipe-it-clean-every-day route because I've learnt about hard drive fatigue the hard way... :-\ My 'Pod needs to last a long time to justify the expense!

Still - why not try moving the PCI card? Let us know if you do, and if you see any results - could be useful! :-)

Sam.

[SandMan]

I usually get around 5 MB/s but it can range anywhere between 4.7 and 6 ish typical.

I'm using an old win2k PC with 466MHz celeron, 256MB RAM new WD 80MB (w/8MB cache) HD, and adaptec 4300 firewire card so the system will have some influence on your transfer rates.

Try disabling any anti-virus software when performing transfers too as this will usually speed things up.

[Gohdzeera]

for me it fluctuates.. but I am constantly mutitasking with like 20 windows open on my laptop.

3 to 5 for me average

[akelsall]

Well there is sortof a funny story about my pci slots. I put it into one of the free ones, 2 below the AGP, but for some idiotic reason, it decided to conflict with my HD controller IRQ. And so my computer had a hissy fit. Two hours to fix. Had to repair Windows 2k. So, once working properly again, I installed it into the slot right below the AGP, and now it works. So the firewire card can not get any closer to the AGP than it already is. There is about 3mm of space between my firewire card and the fan on the GPU.

System is:
Athlon 1.2GHz, 256MB, 30Gb 7200, 10GB 5400.
So the system shouldn't be the limiting factor in the speed.
ephPod is the only thing running when I do the transfer. And no antivirus.

But your right Samwise, I'm not going to be doing a full 7gig reload every week, so it shouldn't be a problem. I'd just like the best performance I can have. :D

[clovell]

I get ~6.2 MB/sec to my WinPod via a SB Audigy Platinum; almost exactly 40 minutes to download 14.7GB of VBR MP3s.

Craig

[akelsall]

I went to plug an additional power cable into my firewire card. It needs one the same as a floppy power connector. I took the floppy one out and tried to put it into the firewire, but it didn't #### reach. Hopefully i can get an extension.
Does anyone else have to plug a power lead into the firewire card from the PSU or is it just me?

[LikeAFox]

On my old Firewire card, I had to do that. However, I have upgraded my motherboard since then and now I have firewire built right onto the board so there is no power connector to plug in.

[time2switch]

I have an Audigy Soundcard with the built in firewire port... but some of my songs weren't being transfterred over properly when I was uploading using Ephpod. One of the moderators of this forum (ashawley... i think... sorry if I mispelled :) ) said it's probably my firewire card causing the problem... I was getting around ~3.2 - 5.0 MB/sec with the Audigy.

I went out and got the Adaptec Fireconnect 4300 firewire card and right away noticed the difference. I re-transfered all my songs again, and all of the songs seem to be playing fine so far (loaded about 5GB, and I haven't listened to all of them yet)... and I'm getting transfer rates around ~6.0 MB/sec consistently.

Absolutely great firewire card IMO. :)

Derek

[ashawley]

You got it right time2switch. ;)

Ah, the 4300 card comes through again. I've never seen that little guy fail anyone.

Thinking of getting one myself just for kicks. :D

Adam

[pank2002]

I get from belowe 1 to maximum 3 mb/s. It kinda suck. My system is a 466mhz, 128mb ram, and a firewire card with VIA OHCI (is that a good chip ?)

[destined_wind]

Is USB 2.0 really THAT much faster compared to Firewire? If so, it is worthwhile to go and buy that cable that Apple has for sale in June (the one with USB 2.0 connectivity...)

[Kenny]

Originally posted by destined_wind
Is USB 2.0 really THAT much faster compared to Firewire? If so, it is worthwhile to go and buy that cable that Apple has for sale in June (the one with USB 2.0 connectivity...)

Actually firewire is faster than usb2 in real world conditions. Theoretically though, it's a different story.

[akelsall]

Originally posted by destined_wind
Is USB 2.0 really THAT much faster compared to Firewire? If so, it is worthwhile to go and buy that cable that Apple has for sale in June (the one with USB 2.0 connectivity...)

Expanding what Kenny said, On "paper" the USB2.0 is faster than firewire as the numbers suggest. But firewire is faster in the real world. However, the ipod doesn't come close to the capacity of either of these devices. If you managed to transfer at a rate of 10MBytes p/s, then you would still only be operating at about 80mbit p/s...which is no where near the firewire @ 400 and USB2.0 @ 480. On average, transfer to the ipod is more realistically around 5 to 6MBytes p/s for most people.
So there is no advantage in waiting for USB2.0 excepting nothing. It has also been discussed that USB2.0 would introduce errors as well since it is new for the ipod. Who knows.

Just my 4 cents worth.