[SOLVED] Copying to new SATA is too slow

[jonwillard]

Hi all,
Bottom line: Copying to 6TB sata drive copy is just not working. Too slow

Observations:
Trying to copy a 1.7 TB folder with about 70,000 photos from one 6TB sata to a new 6TB sata starts fast, getting up to 70mbs/s but quickly slows down to KB/s and then hits 0 and occasionally jumps ~300-700 KB/s but spends more than 10-30 seconds at 0 bytes/s. The longer I wait the more I see 0 bytes/s.

One this happens my computer in general becomes very slow for any disk operations while TaskManager show my computer essentially idle, with 0% disk usage.

I've tried turning off my antivirus, windows update, robocopy, safe mode etc but nothing helps. This seems like a hardware or driver issue but I'm not sure what else to try.

DETAILS
I replaced a 1TB drive in my system with a 6TB drive, so now I have 2 6TB sata drives. Windows 10 is on a separate ssd. Originally I coped my old 6TB drive to my new 6TB drive and that went fine. Then I reformatted my old 6TB drive (the slow way -which took quite awhile) and now I am trying to copy everything back from my new drive to my old drive (why? I'm don't like my sector size choice on the new drive).

Regardless of all that backstory, I am simply trying to copy about 5 TBs from one 6TB drive to another and I've tried both Robocopy and Windows File Exp. It's taking much much longer and behaving poorly for this copy - the same copy in the other direction was reasonably fast in comparison.

 

[USAFRet]

"copy a 1.7 TB folder with about 70,000 "

That WILL be slow. Thousands of small files will be much slower than one single file, of the same cumulative size.

 

[jonwillard]

So seeing copy Speed of 0 bytes/s and taskmanager of 0% disk activity is what you would expect? Oh yeah, should also mention the file name it's copying is DSF8505.jpg and has been for a long time (> 10 minutes). Something is clearly not working right.

 

[USAFRet]

So seeing copy Speed of 0 bytes/s and taskmanager of 0% disk activity is what you would expect? Oh yeah, should also mention the file name it's copying is DSF8505.jpg and has been for a long time (> 10 minutes). Something is clearly not working right.

It might go down to "0" for a little bit.
And up, and down, and up.....

How long does it stay at 0?

How are these drives connected? All internal?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Trying to copy a 1.7 TB folder with about 70,000 photos from one 6TB sata to a new 6TB sata starts fast, getting up to 70mbs/s but quickly slows down to KB/s and then hits 0 and occasionally jumps ~300-700 KB/s but spends more than 10-30 seconds at 0 bytes/s. The longer I wait the more I see 0 bytes/s.

What make/model drives? SMR models?

 

[jonwillard]

Does this help?
WDC WD60EZRZ-00GZ5B1
Manufacturer Western Digital
Heads 16
Cylinders 729,601
Tracks 186,048,255
Sectors 11,721,040,065
SATA type SATA-III 6.0Gb/s
Device type Fixed
ATA Standard ACS2
Serial Number WD-WX11DA88RP7P
Firmware Version Number 80.00A80
LBA Size 48-bit LBA
Power On Count 193 times
Power On Time 508.2 days
Speed 5700 RPM
Features S.M.A.R.T., NCQ
Max. Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Used Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Interface SATA
Capacity 5589 GB
Real size 6,001,175,126,016 bytes
RAID Type None

WDC WD60EZAZ-00SF3B0 (SSD)
Manufacturer Western Digital
Heads 16
Cylinders 729,601
Tracks 186,048,255
Sectors 11,721,040,065
SATA type SATA-III 6.0Gb/s
Device type Fixed
ATA Standard ACS3
Serial Number WD-WX72D6045L7F
Firmware Version Number 80.00A80
LBA Size 48-bit LBA
Power On Count 8 times
Power On Time 5.1 days
Speed 5400 RPM
Features S.M.A.R.T., NCQ, TRIM
Max. Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Used Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Interface SATA
Capacity 5589 GB
Real size 6,001,175,126,016 bytes
RAID Type None

 

[jonwillard]

It might go down to "0" for a little bit.
And up, and down, and up.....

How long does it stay at 0?

How are these drives connected? All internal?

Yes all internal, starts heading towards 0 pretty fast after I start the copy and eventually just seems to stay at 0 indefinitely. The my computer just gets super slow almost halted for any other disk operations, including my ssd windows disk.

I uses whatever cabling I had for my previous setup, C:\windows ssd and a 1tb WD and 6TB WD. All I really was doing was replacing the 1TB WD green with a 6TB drive Blue WD . Originally I set the sector size for the new 6TB drive to 2Meg copied all of my files to it, then did a slow format of the original 6TB and set sector size to default and now Iwant to copy back all files to the original because I decided I prefer the default sector size. So Iwas able to copy all the files off my original 6tb to the new 6tb. But now when I try to copy the files back to my the new 6tb to the original, it starts copying and then leads me to a generally unresponsive system wrt disk access. Internet browsing works, but downloads don't. Reboot is SLOW but when it does reboot, all works again until I try to copy to that drive. Clearly something about that drive, hardware, connections etc. But all windows check say everything is fine.

 

[USAFRet]

Then this sounds like a defective drive. Even though Windows says it is OK.

Have you tried the WD DataLifeguard tool to diagnose?

 

[jonwillard]

Thanks everybody for your help, I think I've figured it out. I unplugged everything and I noticed the sata plug on the mobo seemed a bit loose, so I moved that drive's cable to a different sata plug and now the copy is chugging along at about 125MB/s for jpgs. I can live with that. I guess if I want to add another disk I'll need a new mobo. Just futzing with it must have weakened any already compromised connection to the mobo.

Does seem odd that it would kind of work but stall out due to a loose or bad connection. Maybe it could not report status and caused deadlock.

Again, thx for your time and ideas.

 

[USAFRet]

Ahhh....bad cable or connection.
Yeah, that will do it.

 

[jonwillard]

Have I tried "plugging everything off and plugging it back on again"? Why yes, yes I have... now 🆒
The hardware version of a reboot