Question Extremely Slow file transfers and initialization

Ironarmygeneral

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Jan 21, 2015
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Hi guys. This might be a little long because I'm trying to explain in as much detail as possible so please bare with me.

So, I've got 4 total drives... currently I'm trying to clean up and organize MY ENTIRE FILE SYSTEM... (multiple TB of data, I hoard files, don't judge, lol).

The list of drives I have (again don't judge I am upgrading soon. Hence why I am organizing everything now so when I do a fresh install of Windows everything is easier to put back in its place):

Corsair Force LS 60GB 2.5" SSD (Boot drive [LOL]) - About 2-3GB free, almost full obviously. (This drive, its age, its capacity and speed have been a pain, I've picked out a 2TB 970 EVO NVME drive to replace it. I'll still probably use this drive, because it has served me well for the past... I think... 6 years?)
Western Digital Blue 1TB - 115GB free
Western Digital Blue 3TB - 1.99TB free
Kingston A400 2.5" SSD 120GB - 71.7GB free

Anyway, back to the point. So, up until yesterday, I could usually do file transfers pretty quickly and flawlessly. It wasn't always extremely quick depending on the file size but the speeds were what would be expected depending on the transfer size, which drive the transfer is coming off of and going on to, etc.

However today I'm trying to get everything organized on ALL drives, move things around, and it's taking up to 4 minutes just to transfer something as large as 5MB. What's funny is that everything seems to take the same amount of time to transfer. 5MB is taking as long as a folder that is 80GB in size. It makes NO sense to me.

I've kept an eye on my drives in task manager while they transfer files; the drive I'm transferring OFF of, usually gets pinged to 20-40%, then the drive I am transferring TO goes straight to 100% utilization.

What's worse, is I get absolutely ZERO windows popping up telling me my transfer progress, transfer speeds (other than task manager's info), etc. That window refuses to pop up. The only way I know the transfer has started is that I'll see the two drives transferring data back and forth (in task manager) ping and show activity, and the only way I know it's finished is when the files show in the new location and of course task manager shows the drives settle back down to idle. To make matters even WORSE, once I do ctrl+x/ctrl+c to cut or copy, then ctrl+v to paste in the desired location, it takes a solid minute or two before the transfer even starts.

Notice this is EVERY drive doing this. Not just one or two. ALL OF THEM.

I figured it may have been the fact that my boot drive was old, slow, and almost full, however for one I can barely get files transferred off of it to free up space, and for two, I've hard countless times where the boot drive has almost been completely full and it's never made my file system go whack like this. Ever. It may transfer a bit slower but usually not by much.

I've also tried checking each drive for errors, defragging both hard drives, optimizing every drive, etc.

EDIT: I forgot to give my system specs just in case:

Ryzen 5 5600x
MSI B550 Gaming Pro
16GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB 3000MHz (2x8GB)
GTX 960 2GB
The above drives listed

Hardware Info shows that all drives still have 80-100% life left.

Anyway, if anyone can give me some direction, it would be awesome. It may be something stupid like it really is my boot drive doing it this time, or some other stupid thing I am overlooking. I'm not sure.

Don't worry I also have a NAS that I will making a backup to for my entire system.
 

Ironarmygeneral

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Jan 21, 2015
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What motherboard is all this running on?
The 1TB WD Blue is a hard drive.

It's an MSI B550 Gaming Plus motherboard.

I'm hoping that works--like I said I had originally assumed it was that but I've never had issues like this when either of those drives got almost completely full in the past. I'm still trying to move data off of it to see if everything ends up picking up some speed.