Image: gjolly.fr · A mess of USB cables
Worked Proof shown
A slow USB drive traced to the cable
Claude Code helped track down why a USB drive was slow; the bottleneck turned out to be the cable.
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Credits
- Build author Gauthier Jolly Source ↗
- HN submitter warenhor Source ↗
Earliest dated source: Details reviewed:
The full story
The author boots Linux from an NVMe drive in a USB enclosure on a home server that doubles as a Windows gaming PC. When the drive ran far slower than it should, Claude Code worked through logs and Linux commands to find the bottleneck: the USB cable.
Before and after
- Starting problem
- The external drive negotiated USB 2.0 speeds, delaying cold model loads.
- Reported result
- A suitable data cable improved the desktop measurements; laptop figures were a separate test.
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Desktop throughput (approximate) | 40 MB/s | 470 MB/s |
| 22GB cold load (approximate) | 540 seconds | 47 seconds |
Device and compatibility
- ASRock B550M-ITX/ac desktop; USB-attached NVMe · Linux
The desktop port reached 5Gb/s. A separate laptop test reached 10Gb/s.
Source ↗
What you need
- A USB enclosure, port and cable supporting the intended data rate. Source ↗
Can it be undone?
Reversible: The change is swapping a detachable USB cable. Source ↗
What Claude did
- Used Linux diagnostics to distinguish cable and host-controller limits.Claude Code Source ↗
Parts and cost
How it was done
Tools
Themes
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Sources
From the maker's own write-up or code. We summarise what they report; we haven't tested it ourselves.
- Hacker News: Troubleshooting USB speed issues with Claude Code
The author's write-up.
- Hacker News discussion (3 points)HN submitter: warenhorPosted
The Hacker News thread.