External HDD problem?

[ppppenguin]

i've been given a nice looking 2TB Seagate external HDD. It has a USB3 interface. Plugged it into a USB3 port on my W7 PC. I reformatted it to default settings. I'm testing it by copying a folder with 64GB of data. It says it will take about 1 day, with a transfer speed of about 1MB/s.

This looks utterly dismal. Not a lot of point in having a big HDD with such a slow transfer speed. It might well be the reason I was given it. Any ideas as to why it's performing so badly? Or could my PC possibly be working that slwoly? The data is coming from an ordinary SATA HDD in the PC.

The speed has just jumped up to 6MB/s, possibly because it's transferring a 3GB zip file at the moment, but that's still very slow.

https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/ex...n-desktop/

[Brunel]

Has your version of WIN 7  been updated with the correct USB 3 drivers?

[Mike Watterson]

Try a USB 2.x port. My external USB 3.0 HDDs, including two segates, are fine on USB 2, though USB doesn't do the headline speeds.
Also check the SMART diagnostics of the internal drive.
Also set Windows Defender and/or any other AV to be purely "on demand".

Loads of very small drives ARE very much slower to copy for two main reasons compared to a very large file:
1) The source files may be all over the disc but the copy is by directory, not disc location.
2) The destination has to create the directory entries and edit the file chain. The exact destination partition format affects the speed of this.

I'm not sure how loads of small files affects the destination RAM Cache. Likely it's quickly full with a load of small files. Also writing may start at the inside "track"/"cylinders of the disk and can be up to x4 faster, or more at the outer edge because modern HDDs use a hidden variable sectors per track/cylinder to maximise storage as the data rate can be higher as you move outwards due to constant rotational speed. CDs earlier increased storage capacity by running a single track at constant linear velocity, which is fine for sequential use. Obviously an HDD needs to be at constant rotational speed to maximise random access performance.

[Mike Watterson]

Um, what do you mean by "default settings"? The default offered by Windows 7 Storage Manager? Did you repartition or only format?
NTFS or FAT32?
Also generally never select "Dynamic" as disk type in Windows.

[ppppenguin]

USB2 port was no better, possibly worse.

I did a format only. Using the defaults offered by "right click" disk formatting. I forget what these were. The disk was a single large partition.

I know multiple small files take longer than 1 big file but in any case the speeds are ludicrously low.

[Mike Watterson]

Well, that eliminates needing any kind of updated drivers.
What speed is there on a big copy (not move) to \temp from several GB of source files on the same disc internal disk or to some other USB storage device?
If that's fast, then it's maybe a faulty USB drive.
If that's slow, then the issue is Defender/AV or source drive.

[ppppenguin]

The same 64GB folder on the D: drive is copying to another location on the D: drive at about 50-60MB/s. This is an ordinary WD 500GB drive. It's obviously having to do a lot of seeking as it's both reading and writing to the same HDD.

I've also tried copying it to the C: drive on the same PC which is a SSD. This is reaching 150MB/s. I think this proves that the source drive is OK.

Copying about 700MB from the D: drive to a decent quality (but quite old) USB stick is running at about 6MB/s. Copying the same folder back to the D: drive is about 20MB/s. It's no faster copying from USB stick to the C: drive (SSD) showing that either the USB stick or the USB2 port is limiting the speed.

I'm running AVG free. Is there any reason why AV software should hinder file transfer within the PC?

[Mike Watterson]

Unless AV software is set to only scan on demand, it can sometimes slow transfers. Because it's all poorly designed, especially the "always active modes". It's also less useful now than simply blocking unwanted webscripts, which also blocks zerodays. AV Sw unlike "just block all Javascript unless I enabled it, and all 3rd party" never blocks zero days.

HOWEVER, it looks like the Seagate external USB HDD is faulty. USB memory sticks are generally pretty slow, though faster than floppies

[ppppenguin]

HOWEVER, it looks like the Seagate external USB HDD is faulty.

Which is probably why it was given to me. 2TB external HDDs are still a decently useful size for most people, rather than throwaway items.

[Murphyv310]

Try it on a Linux distro and see if it's any faster.
Using my external drive on Win 7 is dreadfully slow but five to six times quicker on mint. If its still slow it's destined to the bin!