USB pasthrough limited to USB 1.1 speeds

[Sam Morris]

I used Vista Home Basic (SP1) as a host, and conencted a USB mass storage device to the host and configured it to be passed through to the guest.

Transferring files from the disk was limited to 1.1 MB/sec, which is the speed of a USB Full Speed device.

Log messages from the Linux kernel indicate that as far as the guest was concerned, it was a USB 2.0 ("high speed") device:

[    3.967326] ehci_hcd 0000:00:0b.0: EHCI Host Controller
[    3.967417] ehci_hcd 0000:00:0b.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[    3.967711] ehci_hcd 0000:00:0b.0: irq 19, io mem 0xf0805000
[    3.976063] ehci_hcd 0000:00:0b.0: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00, driver 10 Dec 2004
[    3.976110] usb usb1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[    3.976126] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[    3.976130] hub 1-0:1.0: 8 ports detected
[    4.080125] usb usb1: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0002
[    4.080127] usb usb1: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
[    4.080128] usb usb1: Product: EHCI Host Controller
[    4.080129] usb usb1: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.26-2-amd64 ehci_hcd
[    4.080131] usb usb1: SerialNumber: 0000:00:0b.0

...

[  187.700381] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
[  188.137721] usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[  188.180643] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=152d, idProduct=2338
[  188.180677] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=5
[  188.180689] usb 1-1: Product: USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge
[  188.180700] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: JMicron
[  188.180711] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: C05762222222

[Sam Morris]

linux kernel log messages from guest

[Sam Morris]

virtualbox log

[Pedro Côrte-Real]

I have the same issue with a Windows XP host and Ubuntu guest and it makes using external drives and memory card readers painfully slow. This has been like that on every version of Virtualbox I've ever used, since around ~1.6. Any chance of solving this bug? Does anyone actually get 2.0 speeds?

[Frank Mehnert]

Closing. Later VBox releases should give some better USB-performance. We are aware that USB is far away from getting native speed but many devices should achieve a higher speed than USB1.1.