HDD is taking ages to copy files to usb stick, what's wrong?

Patty O Furniture

Hi, i have an external 500GB HDD & is now taking ages to copy over files to a usb stick, i've also tried another & it takes 9m to copy over a 500MB file :eek: in which it took less than a min!

I've checked to see if it needs to be fragmented as its down to 54GB/11% & it says it doesnt need to be fragmented after analysing.

So what could i do?

Thanks.

USB thumbdrives don't need to be defragmented, that will just wear the drive out faster.

Likely the thumbdrive is simply slow. 500MB in 9 mins is about 1MB/s which is a pretty typical write speed for crap thumbdrives.

What is your make and model?

bonzodog2

You may find it faster to copy the files from the external disk to the internal disk and then to the thumb drive

Patty O Furniture

Deleted User wrote: »

USB thumbdrives don't need to be defragmented, that will just wear the drive out faster.

Likely the thumbdrive is simply slow. 500MB in 9 mins is about 1MB/s which is a pretty typical write speed for crap thumbdrives.

What is your make and model?

It was a Medion Ext HDD i got analysed to fragment. I found that out on thumbdrives.
A few days ago they weren't that slow & same thing happened a while ago & was usually quick at 2m for a 500MB file

Both makes are a Attache 4GB+ StoreNGo 16GB i tried just to see if it was the thumb drives

bonzodog2 wrote: »

You may find it faster to copy the files from the external disk to the internal disk and then to the thumb drive

Funny it didnt do that last week bein slow, maybe its cos both usb drives are almost full?

I only do that if i want to make room & burn them onto discs, as i have the ext HDD connected via a 4 port usb hub with a 1.5m to the back of PC, as its slower loading from the front, but i'd say thats normal for that at front?

Fragmentation is not really an issue for external HDDs used to store files. It's primarily a concern for OS drives. Unless the drive is insanely fragmented it's going to have very little affect on sequential transfers of large files like media files.

Perform a benchmark on your external HDD and each of your thumbdrives and post a screenshot of the results
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchmarks/ATTO-Disk-Benchmark.shtml

Patty O Furniture

Thanks, will do that!

Patty O Furniture

bonzodog2 wrote: »

You may find it faster to copy the files from the external disk to the internal disk and then to the thumb drive

I did try it out, just to see as usually i move the files over to the c drive to burn them to disk, as the speed shifted from 30s -> 17m -> 1m, as it only took 30s from external disk to the pc & then it took a min > thumbdrive as it was changing speeds, but i'll try that again, as its not often the thumbdrives are slow. Just tried it out again twice
Ext HDD -> (5min) C: -> (45sec) Thumbdrive [250MB file]
Ext HDD -> (6min) C: -> (45sec) Thumbdrive [300MB file]

Deleted User wrote: »

Fragmentation is not really an issue for external HDDs used to store files. It's primarily a concern for OS drives. Unless the drive is insanely fragmented it's going to have very little affect on sequential transfers of large files like media files.

Perform a benchmark on your external HDD and each of your thumbdrives and post a screenshot of the results
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchmarks/ATTO-Disk-Benchmark.shtml

How do i upload them as it doesnt recognise the .bmk extension & neither does imgshack?

Patty O Furniture

Patty O Furniture wrote: »

How do i upload them as it doesnt recognise the .bmk extension & neither does imgshack?

Just take a screengrab, paste it into Paint, save as a jpeg and attach it here.

Patty O Furniture

Deleted User wrote: »

Just take a screengrab, paste it into Paint, save as a jpeg and attach it here.

Uploaded now, as i realise now you could only view them thru Benchmark32 itself

So it's not your thumbdrives at all. There is something very much wrong with your 500GB HDD, if you're connected via USB 2.0 you'd expect something in the region of 25-30MB/s

Connect your 500GB directly to a port on the rear of your computer (not a hub) and repeat the test. You don't need to post the screengrab, just say if it's the same or not (<1MB/s).

Patty O Furniture

Deleted User wrote: »

So it's not your thumbdrives at all. There is something very much wrong with your 500GB HDD, if you're connected via USB 2.0 you'd expect something in the region of 25-30MB/s

Connect your 500GB directly to a port on the rear of your computer (not a hub) and repeat the test. You don't need to post the screengrab, just say if it's the same or not (<1MB/s).

The ext HDD is actually connected to the back of the pc, cos i worded that wrong above.

The 4 port hub is also connected at the back of pc also with a 1.5m cable alongside the ext HDD, cos it has quicker speeds compared to the front usb slots.

As i got a new pci panel (i hope thats the right name?) last year & noticed the quicker speeds, but had to pull the pc out (below the desk) to slot in the thumbdrive, so thats why i got the hub as it sits on top of the desk

Patty O Furniture

Deleted User wrote: »

So it's not your thumbdrives at all. There is something very much wrong with your 500GB HDD, if you're connected via USB 2.0 you'd expect something in the region of 25-30MB/s

What do you think could be wrong?

Patty O Furniture

I have heard one idea if the HDD is sluggish is to format it, assuming i have the contents off it already?

Is there any other HDD to look out for as a spare?