iPod HELP! USB transfer rate is much slower on WinXP than in Win2K

[mzenz]

Since I bought my iPod Nano 1st gen (4Gb) I've disappointed about it's USB transfer rate on WinXP SP2 (I have an Athlon 64, Asus A8N-E, 1Gb Dual Channel RAM). I first thought "OK, this is the best the player can do, after all, it's FAT formatted". But for my surprise, it's transfer rate on Win2K SP4 is pretty close to the hard disk. I haven't performed a serious benchmark (I could make a little program to measure transfer rates), but it is incredibly faster on Win2K. In fact, it REALLY sucks on WinXP which has much better and newer hardware.
Does anyone know what's going on? I couldn't find any config options for accelerating this, nor in the BIOS config or WinXP control panel (hardware manager).
Thanks in advance!

[nimdae]

Are these transfers being done on the same computer? If not, have you installed the latest usb driver for your XP machine?

[Llorean]

Try rebooting the Nano into Apple_OS and transferring there, instead of in Disk Mode. For some reason Apple's Disk Mode is unreliable on the Nano 1st generation, but inside the retail firmware is better.

[mzenz]

Thanks for the answers guys. As I said, my machine is much newer than the other one, and has WinXP on it, but it is still much slower. The driver of the USB port are part of the drivers package provided by Asus, and is the latest ones and specific to my motherboard. Weird, isn't it?

[PaulPosition]

And windowsXP itself, has it been updated to and beyond Service Pack 2?

[mzenz]

I don't think there's an update, but even if it was, it's still strange. I mean, does anyone use iPod Nano + Rockbox on WinXP? is it slow too as it is to me?

[Llorean]

You never responded as to whether you tried MY suggestion.

[mzenz]

Ohhh... sorry! I didn't read it! actually, I haven't tried that yet, but it would be somewhat uncomfortable to use it that way, instead of just connecting it right away, as I do now. Anyways, I'll try that in a while, but, I still think there is something wrong about... well, I don't know, just something wrong...

[Llorean]

Well, whatever's wrong honestly isn't our fault, since Rockbox has no USB mode, so you're always in one form or other of Apple's software.

It's a known issue that on Nano, under most conditions, the emergency disk mode is much much slower than the in-Apple disk mode. We don't know why, but it's a bug somewhere.

But every now and then someone reports it running full speed (such as your case on the 2k system) and we don't know why this happens either, but it's the anomaly rather than the rule.

[saratoga]

WIndows 2000 enables disk write caching for USB disks by default, XP disables it by default.  The reason your ipod seems so fast in 2000 is that when you copy something, it doesn't actually write it to the ipod right away, so transfers appear to be only limited by the speed of the source hard disk.  You can enable it in the Device Manager, however doing so will make it easier to corrupt the file system on your Ipod if you remove it without unmatching it.

[mightybrick]

WIndows 2000 enables disk write caching for USB disks by default, XP disables it by default.  The reason your ipod seems so fast in 2000 is that when you copy something, it doesn't actually write it to the ipod right away, so transfers appear to be only limited by the speed of the source hard disk.  You can enable it in the Device Manager, however doing so will make it easier to corrupt the file system on your Ipod if you remove it without unmatching it.

Is there any way this situation would be affected by having the ipod booted into the apple firmware?  In WinXP, I consistently have fast transfers in the apple firmware, but slower transfers in Disk Mode.  In Win2k the transfers are fast, regardless of Disk Mode or apple firmware.

[mzenz]

Thanks Saratoga. I couldn't find the config option you mention in hard manager. Anyway, I tried for the first time transfering under the same conditions, but with the original Apple firmware and, trust me... it's lightspeed. So the computer side troubleshooting is out of the question. Why rockbox behaves like this?

[mightybrick]

As stated earlier, this is all caused by Apple's emergency disk mode.  Rockbox does not yet have a USB mode, so all USB transfers are all handled by either the Apple firmware or the Apple Disk Mode.

[saratoga]

WIndows 2000 enables disk write caching for USB disks by default, XP disables it by default.  The reason your ipod seems so fast in 2000 is that when you copy something, it doesn't actually write it to the ipod right away, so transfers appear to be only limited by the speed of the source hard disk.  You can enable it in the Device Manager, however doing so will make it easier to corrupt the file system on your Ipod if you remove it without unmatching it.

Is there any way this situation would be affected by having the ipod booted into the apple firmware?  In WinXP, I consistently have fast transfers in the apple firmware, but slower transfers in Disk Mode.  In Win2k the transfers are fast, regardless of Disk Mode or apple firmware.

Transfers are slower in Rockbox the Retail.  Caching hides this in Windows 2000 but not XP.

[mzenz]

Alright, I'm just starting to get it. Now, putting it all together... you say that rockbox uses some sort of "secondary" method for USB transfers provided by the iPod harware and the main transfer method is only implemented by the original Apple firmware?
OK. If this is right, let me ask you a couple of questions: will Rockbox support that feature sometime soon? If not, I'd like to help. I'm a C/C++ programmer and improving this would be a valuable improvement...! (battery life improvement would be just as valuabe, though I supose it would be more complex to solve)