I think what you are seeing is typical. Indeed, I see similar transfer rates when I transfer large files over a wired connection (currently on wireless).

From this paqe (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/21405-42-highest-transfer-rate-home) someone broke it down pretty well:

"A 100mbps lan connection will have a max of 12.5 Meg/sec transfer rate. But depending on you router you may have less. A gig lan max is 125Meg/sec, but depending on you HD you will get less. Most 7200 rpm drive are around 50-60 meg/sec. If you have 5400rpm drive its around 25-30."

In short, you aren't going to see USB speeds over a 100MB LAN connection.

I'm having the same speed issues. I have a gigabit netowrk. I have a Linksys NSLU2 connected to my network along with the PogoPlug Pro. The data (about 130GB) is identical on both devices. I have a 7200 USB drive attached to the NSLU2 and a 5400 USB drive attached to the PogoPlug. I expected some speed differences, but nothing like what I'm seeing. I deleted the same folder (1.5GB) from each of the drives. The data on the NSLU2 took approximately 12 minutes to delete. The data on the PogoPlug is reporting that it will take anywhere from 6 to 23 hours to delete.

Is this normal?

I'm already using the 3.x version of the software. The final delete process time was 12 minutes for the NSLU2 , the pogoplug was 2 hours. As a test, I connected a mirrored 7200 ext3 drove to the pogoplug, and the delete time improved to 1.5 hours. The speeds are astonishingly slow and unacceptable. Is there anything that can be done to speed up the read/wrote speeds?

I ran the" fix disk errors" in windows as instructed on both pogoplug drives. I received the following message when the task completed:

"No problems were found on the device or disk. It is ready for use."

While connected to the computer I copied a 4.8 GB folder from drive 1 to a new folder on the same drive (this folder contained approx. 50 files). This took approx. 9 minutes with a transfer rate of 7.7 gig per second.

After reconnecting the drives as instructed, it took approximately 30 minutes to delete the 4.8 GB folder from drive 1. However, when I tried to delete the folder I deleted last night on drive 2 (1.5 GB, approx 11,000 files) it has been 60 minutes with no files deleted, no files per second reported, and an expected time to complete of 1 day.

As a second test of drive 2, I disconnected the drives from PogoPlug as you instructed. I rescanned drive 2 with windows. No errors were found. I created the same delete test folder (50 items, 4.8GB) on drive 2, that I had previously created on drive 1. This took approximately 9 minutes.

I ejected the drive 2 from windows, powered up the pogoplug, waited for the green light, then reattached drive 1 and drive 2.

I deleted my test folder of 4.8GB on drive 2 in about 30 minutes.

When I tried to delete the original 1.5GB, 11,000 file folder, it took 8 minutes to discover the items, and is reporting it will complete the task in 16 hours.

I can conclude there is nothing wrong with the read/write to these two drives, nor the cables. Pogoplug has a very difficult time deleting a large volume of files, not size of the data, but the number of files.

Will EXT3 make this process faster?

I'm sorry, I didn't realize my post seemed like I was speaking about a particular response. It wasn't, and I apologize again. I cut and pasted a response I sent to the pogoplug tech support in response to several suggestions they had made to fix the speed issue. It was easier than re-typing the whole thing.

Are there versions of firmware/software on the pogoplug device itself that may differ. I purchased a second pogoplug as a back up the other day, and didn't realize it was not a Pro. Anyhow, I thought I would try swapping the device and using the same drive. The read/write speed on the regular pogoplug seems to be alot faster than the Pro.

I'm using "smart sync pro" software as a way to gauge read/write speed. SSP reads all data within (between two drives) designated containers, whether it be drives, folders or a single file, and compares it's signature to determine if the file has been changed, created or deleted. This process is timed.

The SSP process on my largest data folder took 17 minutes to complete with the regular pogoplug, while the pogoplug pro is still running and it's been over 30 minutes.

Hmmm.... interesting times. Is the Pogoplug a pink one? Looks like I'll keep my cherished slug for some time.

pogoplug is really slow.

problem might be the usb 2.0 interface on the PGP slowing us down. some things to keep in mind-

by my observations-

USB 1.2 usually tops out at 1.2 meg per second

USB 2.0 usually tops out at about 5-12 meg per second

typical 7200 RPM Sata drive gets anywhere from 30-90 megabytes per second

higher quality drive with cache can sometimes get 100 megabytes to around 120

SSD drives can achieve read speeds in excess of 190-230 mb per second

100 mb networking can achieve speeds around 8-12 meg per second

1 Gig can achieve about 20-45 meg. have gotten about 60 megabyte using full duplex and direct connect(no switch) between 2 fast hard drives.

like it or not, your top speed will be bottle necked by the slowest component in your system. for most people, that will either be the USB interface or 100 mb networking. for some, it will be slow old 5400 rpm drives/green drives connected via the usb port.

add to that, the specs of the PGP is pretty weak plus overhead from the OS and you have a not so powerful server that is handicapped in some ways. not it;s fault though-it;s not meant to be high performance.

I monitored network throughput while streaming a "non optimized" avi(play original) file and found that it did stream correctly-that is to say that it sent the data in a burst rather than as a constant stream-that;s what you want if you are remote-you don;t want to saturate the connection but request low bandwidth data as needed. video stuttered and buffered a bit but that might have simply been the limitations of my setup, buggy software...i mean it stutters even when locally attached via wifi. the amount of data sent never exceeded 1.2 meg so i did not think the 100 mb networking was the issue. I have since switched out to 1 gig switch but same issue.

question-there is a Sata port on board, anyone who has modded their unit to expose this have any better performance?

the interface is regular SATA on the motherboard so no plug and play/hotplug(has to be attached when booting up). from what I have read on PlugApps, it;s unsupported officially. another issue is that along with the weak processor, there is only 128 mb of ram on board.

what the CE people could do is issue a live cd that boots their Linux but then they;d have to compile it for standard processors. also other people do it better. plus it;s not their business-they want to sell you the hardware.

You could build yourself a more capable machine running something like FreeNas. it boots off a USB stick so it;s solid state. a machine running a full OS would perform better but would also consume more electricity.

part of the problem is us users trying to use their devices for purposes that were never intended. as a read only media consumption back end, it probably is adequate. doesn;t take much hardware to run simple file sharing services. the Pogoplug is designed to consume only 4 watts of power and be maintenance free compared to a full fledged server.

i;ve looked around and it;s tough to beat the price for the PGP Pro-It lists for 99$ but I got it for 60$ with tax and shipping. wish it performed better or had slightly beefier specs. would be cool if the ram was upgradeable. found some atom machines on Newegg for as low as about $149.00 without drives.

You could find some low level atom based 64 bit net top and run a full linux or freenas on a USB Stick but it would probably consume more than 4 watts.

Unfortunately, a service like Dropbox or Carbonite might be a better solution for many here.

Dropbox or Carbonite (or my new favorite, SugarSync) certainly has the accessibility, but for local access and file sharing at home, even at 2-4MB/sec the PP has them all beat.

At least, until I get fiber-optic to my house :) (not holding my breath).

I think CE can see the data shared from our units as well. whats weird is if the my.pogoplug website goes down or gets hacked, is your data compromised?

as for read write speeds, have been contemplating populating my unit with 4 32 GB USB flash drives and using it as a "solid state mostly read only device" for serving out movies, music and pictures. if I need extra space, i might mod the case to expose the internal sata port. these files tend to be static and not changed or written very often. Format the drives as EXT3 and turn off on the fly transcoding.

given the outbound traffic will probably never exceed 4-5 mbs per second due to all the bottlenecks, I don;t think halfway decent write speeds are in the cards. actually Internet upload speed is probably your bottle neck here.

The Pogoplug works best as a "consolidation" device. i originally purchased the unit to mod it and install plugapps linux but I think the cloud services might be useful.

well you have do the initial config from the website but then you can enable SSH and telnet into the unit. from the commandline you could probably control the unit.

that being said, hope CE doesn;t go out of business