Seagate Backup Plus slow transfer rate

[imrazor]

So a few months ago my fiancee got a 5TB USB 3.0 Seagate Backup Plus external hard drive. At first it behaved normally, transferring data at the expected USB 3.0 speeds (50MB/sec and up.) But now it's started behaving weirdly. At first it will transfer at 40MB/sec and up but after a minute or so, the transfer rate will drop precipitously. Right now I'm copying about 12GB of data to it, and it's showing a 30KB/sec transfer rate to the drive. Anyone know what might be causing this?

 

[imrazor]

Tried a different drive, same story, though it dropped to 1.5MB instead of 30KB/sec. I'm trying to copy my Win10 profile and data to a new system, and the problem appears to be the thousands of miniscule *.dat files in my profile.

To work around this, I tried to zip up my profile, but 7zip kept complaining about access denied errors even though I ran the bloody thing as admin. I'll think I'll start another thread and ask about migrating profiles.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there imrazor,

Have you tried to transfer just a single, big file? Does the issue persists?

I believe you can see if the drive is in a healthy state: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Also, you can go to your MOBO's website and update your USB 3.0 drivers.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[imrazor]

Hey, D_Know_WD, thanks for your response. I did try several hundred files in the 15MB - 50MB range and they all transferred at around 50MB/sec. Then I tried another G-Tech USB 3.0 drive I had lying about and it also transferred the little files at around 1.5MB/sec, but also handled the big files easily. So I started Windows Backup and tried to backup my 2TB system drive to it. When I checked last night it was still grinding away after 3 or 4 hours.

Before I tried all this, I ran a short SMART test on the Seagate drive and it passed. So I think the problem is all those miniscule files in my profile. I tried to work around it by zipping up my profile before transferring it, but got access denied messages while zipping - even though I gave 7zip admin rights. It seems Microsoft really does not want people backing up their profiles.

 

[adrianwiggin]

Easy fix: Go to device manager right click the external drive, go to policies and click better performance and click enable write caching.

 

[chrismidd55]

Easy fix: Go to device manager right click the external drive, go to policies and click better performance and click enable write caching.

You are a genius