Question 3.5 hdd slows down Internally but is fast on a USB adapter?

[Kenneth Richner]

I just started have issues with a 3.5" Seagate Barracuda 4TB drive I wanted to transfer about 1.2 TB of game data off another internal 3.5" drive when I try the speeds are normal for about 1-2 minutes (80- 125 mbs) the it slows down to 2 mbs sometimes stalling to 0! I tried swapping SATA cables different SATA ports nothing helps!

Then I decided to transfer the data to a USB drive that went fine! So it's not the source drive! Then I tried to transfer the data now on the USB drive to the 4TB barracuda Still in the PC and the same thing happens? I then take that 4TB drive out if the PC and connect it to External USB 3 dock and the data transfers to it fine at 80 to 120 mbs???

So it's not the drives they can sustain the speed on a USB interface but not when in the system on the SATA interface?

I did notice that while in the PC I pulled up the resource monitor and the 4tb is at 100% Even when the transfer drops to almost nothing! I have a new system that's pretty fast a Gigabyte Aurous master with a Gen 9 I7 and 32 gigs of RAM there is a 1 TB WD black NVME m.2 Drive on the MOBO (yes I know it uses a SATA lane )

I did try swapping the SATA cables to different ports to see if it's because it's sharing a M.2 port. I'm at a loss. Could it be because the Seagate Barracuda is a shucked drive?

I didn't have any issues when it was in my old system a EVGA p55 classified Mobo Gen 1 I7 16 gigs of RAM these drives worked fine in that system minus the M.2 drive.

I also lost a DVD and BD drive because my new case doesn't have 5 1/4 slots! So I'm using 2 less SATA devices in this system! Any ideas what's going on? I gave a lot of Information hopefully someone knows what's happening? Is it a Gigabyte thing (drivers?)

 

[Grobe]

What does the s.m.a.r.t. data of your disks says?

Does it matter what disks are connected at the same time (no matter what source or target disk are) ?

Did the slow file-copy issue happens only once ?

 

[popatim]

Did you transfer the same data in your internal & external testing?

I suspect your Seagate may be a 256mb Cache drive which often indicates it's using SMR technology which has it's own pitfalls, like in what you describe.

https://www.storagereview.com/what_is_shingled_magnetic_recording_smr/

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/smr-hard-drive-performance.3236461/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2RRHBIY9SO3JL?ASIN=B01HAPGEIE
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/8e7zfg/smr_drives_are_evil/

 

[Kenneth Richner]

Did you transfer the same data in your internal & external testing?

I suspect your Seagate may be a 256mb Cache drive which often indicates it's using SMR technology which has it's own pitfalls, like in what you describe.

https://www.storagereview.com/what_is_shingled_magnetic_recording_smr/

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/smr-hard-drive-performance.3236461/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2RRHBIY9SO3JL?ASIN=B01HAPGEIE
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/8e7zfg/smr_drives_are_evil/

It's one of those smr drives so that's probably the issue I'm going to use it for storage out of the system after this, and yes it was the exact same data strange thing is when it was on USB I got a better transfer rate that held steady for the most part 20-50 and it didn't stall like it did inside the system? Maybe because of the slower limit if USB it was able to sustain a speed?

 

[Kenneth Richner]

What does the s.m.a.r.t. data of your disks says?

Does it matter what disks are connected at the same time (no matter what source or target disk are) ?

Did the slow file-copy issue happens only once ?

The smart data is all green and it didn't matter what source disk I didn't have another drive with enough room to test transfer to (without shucking a drive) except my Synology NAS but that's a different animal that always takes data faster than any other drive I have becides SSDs if I had a pair of 8 or 10 TB drives to throw in the empty NAS bays I would have sent the data there instead (don't have the $$ to fill the last to slots of the DS918+ yet I will only use WB reds in it and have 2 8tb reds in it now for my Plex server)