Why is my external USB hard drive transfer rate capping at 1 MBPS?

check the wire,change one for test

A USB 1.1 device would deliver speeds like that. Make sure you’re in a 2.0 port. Also, check the SMART readout in the BIOS, you may be having a high error rate leading to a failure.

Odd.. the speed has increased considerably after performing a clean install, which was done for a different reason

Make sure the hard drive is at a lower level than the the computer. The gravity will help syphon the data faster.

If it is a bus powered USB hard drive (no power adapter needed) make sure to use the USB cable that came with the drive; I recently purchased a very small portable external USB drive that was bus powered and the included cable was very short in length; the manufacturer explained this was for power consumption purposes and data throughput purposes and should not use any other cable. I inadvertently tried to use a longer USB and had the exact same result as you described-extremely slow bus speed and the hard drive randomely unmounting itself.

just 2.0

@520xyz: what? Don’t understand your reply.

You’ll want to make sure you’re using a USB 2.0 Cable. and that the USB ports on your laptop work at 2.0 speeds. If you’re using windows, you should be able to tell by looking at your hardware profile. USB is also limited by the speed of your bios and your processor speed, since not all of the processing for the devices is done by the ports themselves, especially when copying files. If you have a slower computer, if you’re doing a lot of other processor intensive tasks, or you have less memory available, you’ll likely notice a slower speed.