Any way to speed up mp3 loading to audio player?

February 4, 2013 4:30 PM

Any way to speed up mp3 loading to audio player? My computer says it will take 13 hours. Is there any way to speed this up? I'm running Windows 7 with 2.0 USB connection. Thanks so much, hive mind peeps.
posted by ragtimepiano to Technology (12 answers total)

Response by poster: This is for 3.28G.
posted by ragtimepiano at 4:30 PM on February 4, 2013

Another port? It's possible that another USB port will be better-powered and/or quicker (even if they're all 2.0 spec). Longshot, but worth a try.

On your followup: there's something wrong there. Can you format the MP3 player, restart your computer, and try again?

Has it always been this slow?
posted by supercres at 4:33 PM on February 4, 2013

Response by poster: I don't think all uploads have been this slow; but I don't think I've ever uploaded more than 500MB to a player before, though. This is just a little clip flash drive/audio player I got on ebay. The directions don't seem to include formatting: I am instructed just to"drag and drop" mp3 files.
posted by ragtimepiano at 4:37 PM on February 4, 2013

Response by poster: When I copy the files into a new folder on the computer, it is less than a minute.
posted by ragtimepiano at 4:38 PM on February 4, 2013

Response by poster: I'm using Windows 7, 64 bit.
posted by ragtimepiano at 4:39 PM on February 4, 2013

Best answer: Hi-speed USB 2.0 can do something like 20 MB/s. With a little extra slowness added in to make the numbers nice, that's about a minute a gigabyte.

If it's only 500 MB you're doing that's taking 13 hours, it looks like it's using USB 1.0 for some reason. Maybe the device is a piece of crud? Maybe you're going through a USB 1 hub somehow (my ancient keyboard for instance has one of those built in). Maybe your drivers and/or motherboard are confused - have you rebooted since this first started happening?
posted by aubilenon at 4:46 PM on February 4, 2013

What other USB devices do you have plugged in? If the bus is being shared with any USB 1 devices like mice or keyboards that will slow things down disproportionately since the computer still has to communicate with them at USB 1 speeds. On most machines you should be fine as long as they're not sharing a hub, but I know a few older machines will have multiple ports sharing the same controller.
posted by ckape at 4:53 PM on February 4, 2013

If this is a cheapo ebay purchase, maybe it's actually a USB 1.0 device.
posted by Jairus at 4:56 PM on February 4, 2013

Can you tell us more about the player, maybe a model/brand? It could just be really slow flash memory. Old flash memory sometimes had extra slow write speeds. And what's the capacity?
posted by Sphinx at 4:56 PM on February 4, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks for everyone's advice. I suspect the problem may be my USB 2.0 hub. It's several years old, is probably becoming erratic, and needs to be replaced. I rebooted, changed hub inputs a few times, finally got the 3.28G upload going at 370 KB/sec---the estimate it gives me is just under three hours. Tomorrow I'll go get a new USB highspeed 2.0 hub! Then, @ aubilenon, I should expect about a G a minute? Wow.
posted by ragtimepiano at 5:13 PM on February 4, 2013

If the devices are fast enough, yeah, USB 2 can carry a bit more than that.
posted by aubilenon at 5:54 PM on February 4, 2013

It's probably too late now, but what if you bypassed the hub and plugged it directly into one of the computer's USB ports? At least then you'd know if it was the hub causing the problem.
posted by DarkForest at 8:21 AM on February 5, 2013