Firewire is slow on Windows XP SP2

Recently I dusted off my Firewire external hard drives previously hidden away in a secure closet to organize and backup about half a terabyte of data across my various computers. Spring cleaning for the binary world can be a tedious process but the end result of having clean systems is well worth it. Data transfers of this size usually take a long time to complete so I was dismayed by the realization of everything progressing slower than usual. I fired up Rainmeter and clearly saw data lumbering around 6 to 7 megabytes per second. Normally Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 drives operate in the range of 26 to 39 megabytes per second on file copy operations. I needed a solution quickly because the tedium of file transfers running many times slower than normal was unacceptable.

The problem is caused by a driver design choice introduced by Microsoft in Windows XP Service Pack 2 when dealing with Firewire 800 devices. Instead of operating at S800 speed, Firewire 800 devices incorrectly run at S100 or about 100 megabits per second. This explains the slow down so what is the solution? RME, a German firm specializing in high-end Firewire audio devices, posted a lengthy workaround involving a reversion to the SP1 Firewire driver on SP2 machines. Although this solution works, it still limited Firewire 800 devices to S400 speeds instead of S800. As of December 2004, Microsoft has released a hotfix described in Knowledge Base article KB885222 that corrects this issue. This is a very old issue and unless a consumer is actively using Firewire devices, this problem may escape new users. The hotfix worked perfectly and I successfully completed my spring cleaning.

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April 10, 2006 | Filed Under Tech/Gadgets 

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