Question External HDD extremely slow in USB 3.1

[arnoud71]

Hi, I recently purchased a 6 TB external Elements HDD, exFAT formatted. The problem is that it is extremely slow. To copy 2 TB to the disk in USB 3.1 it will take >36 days!
What can be the cause of this?
Thanks!

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Couple of things that need mentioning, due to context.
1| What are the specs tot eh system you've got the drive tethered to? Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model. BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time.

2| What sort of files are you copying over? How many files are you trying to copy over?

3| WD have a number of external drives under the Elements series, which one do you have? How old is the drive?

 

[arnoud71]

I forgot how I can look up these specs easily so it took a little while?
This is what I got up to now:
1) I can specify if you can help me with the software with which I can retrieve these data, I have no idea at the moment
M-board: ASUS Crosshair VI Hero motherboard;
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition (PG413)
Ram: 2x Corsair DDR4-2998 / PC4-24000 DDR4 SDRAM UDIMM 16 GB
SSD: Samsung 990 Plus 1 TB
HDD: internal 2x Seagate ST4000DM005-2DP166 - 4 TB
PSU: ? (I put a new one in 1,5 years ago, so its 1,5 year old, I thought it was a Corsair Platinum 750W)
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional (x64) Build 19045.5965 (22H2)

2) I was trying to copy abouy 2 TB in 4.262K files.
3) The drive is only 1-2 months old, but I was mistaken, it is actually a Seagate drive:

Seagate Expansion Desktop 6TB, Externe Harde Schijf, 3.5", PC & Laptop, USB 3.0, Data Rescue Service (STKP6000400)​

A second problem I got is that, since we upgraded to the 1 TB SSD a few weeks ago (I had a 500 Gig SSD, both Samsung Plus), My boot time is 16 minutes now, it was 4 minutes. Strange or what?

 

[Misgar]

My boot time is 16 minutes now, it was 4 minutes. Strange or what?

There is something very wrong with your boot drive times. I'm writing this on an ancient i5-3570K system and it boots into Windows 10 from a grotty 120GB Patriot Burst SATA SSD (no DRAM cache) in approximately 1 minute.

Even if you were booting from an old fashioned spinning hard disk, I'd expect the Windows desktop to appear in roughly 2 minutes. Your 4 minutes is very slow, 16 minutes is an eon.

I suggest a clean install of Windows on a (blank) SSD and see if Windows boot times improve.

There's a good chance the 6TB STKP6000400 is a slow SMR drive, not a fast CMR drive.
https://www.howtogeek.com/803276/cmr-vs.-smr-hard-drives-whats-the-difference/

SMR drives can become horribly slow after they become fragmented, especially when transferring thousands of small files. You may find SMR drive transfer rates drop to around 10 to 20MB/s, even on a fast computer, when the disk fills up.

I stopped buying WD Elements and Seagate USB3 desktop hard disk drives back in 2018 and switched to internal CMR hard disks and portable SSDs (Crucial X6). I see transfer rates between 400 and 600MB/s on my 4TB X6 (from M.2 NVMe) via USB.

Life's too short to wait for a fragmented SMR drive to finish copying 2TB of data.

Buy CMR drives.

 

[arnoud71]

Thanks for your extensive answer. I am trying to prevent a clean install of Windows, but may be I have to do it anyway.
Thanks for your info on the external hard drives, that does help, I ll consider the CMR drive.

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks for your extensive answer. I am trying to prevent a clean install of Windows, but may be I have to do it anyway.
Thanks for your info on the external hard drives, that does help, I ll consider the CMR drive.

Reduce the system down to only the boot drive.
See how the boot time goes.

 

[arnoud71]

P.S. writing time is currently 60 kB/s, so not even in MB.
The program (GoodSync) calculates it will cost more than 3000 hours to finish the job... 🙂

 

[arnoud71]

Reduce the system down to only the boot drive.
See how the boot time goes.

I will try that, I need some time for this. Thanks!