Question External Harddrive extremly slow - WD ELEMENTS 1 TB!

[Verem]

Hello,

my WD ELEMENTS (bought 4 month ago) is ultra slow. Copy speed is like 10 MB/s (tried it with an 1gb file from the hd and 4 hd files - it always stays around 8-10 MB/s). CrystalDisklMaster show 90 MB/s write and read speed. Its laggy if you enter any folders. My ancient Seagate Harddrive from 2016 is doing 100+ Mb/s and has 0 lag. The USB slot is 3.0. I didnt formant neither.

Any ideas what could be the reason?

 

[Ralston18]

[Moderator Note: moving post from Computer Peripherals to Storage. More applicable.]

Try another known working (at speed) USB cable.

Look in Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe system performance.

(Use both tools but only one tool at a time.)

First - while doing nothing.

Second - while downloading to some other drive that performs at expected speeds.

Third - while downloading the 1 GB file to the slow external drive.

Look for what is different with system performance when the copy process is slow versus being fast.

Post what you find.

 

[Verem]

[Moderator Note: moving post from Computer Peripherals to Storage. More applicable.]

Try another known working (at speed) USB cable.

Look in Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe system performance.

(Use both tools but only one tool at a time.)

First - while doing nothing.

Second - while downloading to some other drive that performs at expected speeds.

Third - while downloading the 1 GB file to the slow external drive.

Look for what is different with system performance when the copy process is slow versus being fast.

Post what you find.

New USB cable and the same issue, but what happened: The sound was gone. Like completly gone. As soon as I put in the slow hd with a different cable the sound just stopped. Never happened before. Had to remove the hd and restart the pc for the sound to come back.

 

[Ralston18]

My suggestion is to take a look at system performance via Task Manager, Resource Monitor, etc..

However, before looking at system performance first take a look in Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer.

The objective being to discover any error codes, warnings, or informational events being captured with respect to the slow download speeds and the loss of audio.

Reliability History is end user friendly and presents a timeline format that can reveal patterns.

Event Viewere requires more time and effort to navigate and understand. To help with Event Viewer:

How To - How to use Windows 10 Event Viewer | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

Also update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.,

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original to build, new, refurbished, used).

Slow download speed is not a problem per se. Slow download speed is the result of some hardware, software, or configuration problem.

That specific problem is what needs to be found.

Overall, multiple and varying errors are a sign of a failing/faltering PSU.

More needs to be known.