11-22-2007, 10:07 AM

This is confusing me, any one else experience anything like this or know what might be happening?

Until recently I had my iMac upstairs running Tiger. Connected to the iMac was a USB drive which has a 3 port USB hub on the back of it. I would then attach my Sony PSP to this hub and a couple of times a week I'd download about 4GB's worth of movies onto it with each file being around 500MB. This would only take a few minutes to complete.

However I've now moved the Mac downstairs, set it up exactly as it was but the first thing I did was to install Leopard. Now everything about the Mac seems to work perfectly with no difference between how it used to be running Tiger.....except one thing.

Now when I copy a bunch of films to my PSP it takes about 20+ minutes to complete getting worse the more films I copy at the same time! It's almost as if the bus is running at USB 1.1 speeds.

The thing is, I've not noticed any USB speed loss for anything else, I still pull in my Aperture database and photos from my USB drives, my USB card readers seem to be perfectly okay and the drive with the USB hub on seems to be running at the correct speed as far as I can tell.

Anyone know or heard of any USB speed issues with Leopard? I guess the obvious thing to try is connecting the PSP directly to the Mac and not go through a hub which I will try but this isn't really a long term solution for me as the USB cable for the PSP is stupidly short and all my USB ports are used for external drives so a hub is basically essential to me.

Any ideas?

11-22-2007, 02:33 PM

Is everything going through that USB hub? Does the PSP speed up when you plug it directly into the USB port vice the hub?

11-22-2007, 06:17 PM

Originally Posted by baggss

Is everything going through that USB hub? Does the PSP speed up when you plug it directly into the USB port vice the hub?

Other than the PSP the only other thing connected to the hub is a card reader.

I have just tried connecting the PSP directly to the Mac i.e. not through any hub and it still seems pretty slow with 1GB of data taking about 12 minutes to copy. That looks like USB 1 speed (12MB/sec) to me not the 480MB/Sec of USB 2???

12-13-2007, 10:32 PM

There are a great number of posts concerning Adaptec, Belkin and other brand PCI cards for USB 2 failing under Leopard. Do a Google search for Apple Discussion on this.

01-20-2008, 04:34 AM

Hi
After a fresh install on my iBook G4 1.2, i have the same problem : USB2 transferring at USB1 speed...
USB keys and hard drives are not in cause : they work perfectly on another iMac G5 under Tiger
I google the problem, but it seems very few people are concerned ??
I someone has the solution, please !

01-20-2008, 03:40 PM

Think your only solution is a Firewire, preferably 800, drive. USB 2 works far better on Windows machines than it ever did on Macs sadly. Can backup XP Pro on USB 2 in about 20 minutes, Tiger/Leopard about 21/2 hours.

02-05-2008, 02:51 PM

I have exactly the opposite problem. I have a Mac Pro 8 core 3.0Ghz with 13GB RAM, 4 SATA internal drives, 2 USB external 500 Western Digital Drives. I use bay one of the sata for OSX Tiger and Bay 2 for OSX Leopard (both purchased versions). The problem is when I'm in Tiger the USB drives have a through put of about 3MB and when booted in Leopard they have a through put of about 24MB. I can only guess that it's a driver problem, but I haven't been able to find anything about the fix. I did find that the WD USB Drives have a problem with speed. These WD drives are USB and eSATA. When using them as eSATA drives they work fine on both versions of OSX. The problem is I need the eSATA connections for other drives and just want to use the WD drives as backup. Has anyone got any ideas why the drives perform normally under Leopard and not under Tiger?