Solving slow or stuttery firewire transfers on Windows 7
Just a tip for any googlers experiencing trouble with Windows 7 and slow firewire transfer speeds: setting the firewire drivers to their 'legacy' versions solved the problem for me.
Ever since setting up W7 I've had issues with large files transferring very slowly from my external firewire drive. Smaller files fly across, but anything over roughly 100mb seemed to get bogged down, and took way longer than it should have - a 450gb transfer last month was very frustrating. I forgot all about the problem until this evening, when I finally got around to setting up my backup system; SyncBack reported it would need 10hrs to transfer 200gb, and I could see it stalling on large files. I wondered whether there was a problem with the firewire drivers, and a bit of googling turned up this forum post, which seems to have fixed it.
It recommends changing the firewire drivers to the 'Legacy' versions. To do this, go to Device Manager and find your firewire device. In my case it was '1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller'. Right-click it and hit 'Update Driver Software', then 'Browse my computer for driver software' and 'Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer'. Select the version with (Legacy) at the end and click-through to install it.
For me, that was all it needed. I didn't even have to restart. My backup is now going to take 4hrs, and it's not pausing. In fact, lots of smaller files are increasing the estimated time, which is the complete opposite of its previous behaviour. Wish I'd discovered this last month...
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October 26th, 2009 - 12:29
Are you allowed to opt for legacy drivers if you don’t have Windows 7 Xtreme-Pro-Ultimate-with-Knobs-And-Tinsel-On version? I’m advising my mum on her purchase of a new PC and I want to know whether or not to tell her to stump up for a more expensive “edition” of the OS.
October 26th, 2009 - 14:49
Hmmm. I can’t find any official confirmation I’m afraid, but I can’t see any reason why not. Device Manager is still fully accessible in Windows 7 Home Premium, and I can’t imagine legacy drivers are a business-only feature – you’d think home users would be in just as much need. I’ll confirm as soon as I see a Home Premium in the wild, though.
October 26th, 2009 - 22:03
I’m running home premium and there does appear to be a legacy driver for firewire in the list. I didn’t try it though (I have no firewire devices)
October 27th, 2009 - 01:44
Cool, thanks Simon!
November 10th, 2009 - 16:39
Why? If 7 is the latest OS from Microsoft, would we have to use legacy drivers. Do you not think that the newer drivers would be faster transfer? Thanks for the post and the ability to find this quickly to fix my issue.
March 13th, 2010 - 02:03
Found a Solution!
In my case, a client had 2 external RAIDs, 2 different brands, 1 Firewire 800 the other firewire 400, Windows 7 Ultimate X64. The speed was terribly slow. I first installed the {Legacy} drivers for the IEEE devices and it did improve a little but barely. With a little digging I found a solution in the External Drives Properties.
The default Windows settings for FireWire-connected drives can reduce your External drive performance by as much as 90%. This problem is easily corrected, just follow these instructions:
1. Open “My Computer” or “Computer” from your (Start) Menu or Button.
2. Right-click the external Hard disk drive from the list and select “properties”
7. Click the “Hardware” tab.
8. Highlight the drive your having problems with from the drive list and click on “Properties”.
9. Click on the “Policies” tab.
10. You will see two radio buttons – “Optimize for quick removal” and “optimize for performance”.
11. If not selected, select “Optimize for performance” and click on “OK”. If running Vista or Windows 7 also check “enable write caching on the disk”.
12. Click on “OK” and exit.
Lighting speeds should now be reached.
This problem affects XP, Vista and Windows 7. It may improve performance for any drive connected via FireWire.
Good Luck!
March 13th, 2010 - 15:32
Interesting that this makes such a difference – thanks! Worth pointing out this means you can’t just unplug your device – it’ll have to be ‘safely’ removed in Windows first.