Seagate Expansion (external drive) extremely low write speeds

[Kill3rCat]

So, I have two drives; an SSD and HDD both 500GB. They're both pretty much full (>90%) so I recently bought a 2TB internal hard drive and wanted to transfer my OS from the HDD to the SSD. Since my case only had room for two drives, I decided to use a Seagate 2TB external drive just so I could have somewhere to store the files before I moved them to the new drive.

The thing supposedly has a rpm around 5000 and uses USB 3.0, and yet I am getting some ridiculously low write speeds when transferring files from my HDD (for transfer later to the new internal drive) to the Seagate.

See for yourself:

Now, like an utter mug, I didn't test the drive before I started moving - as in, not copying, no backup - my files to the ED. Most of the files are just games like Halo: CE, Star Trek: BC, Star Citizen, etc. Some are a bit more... irreplaceable. WIP mod files, WIP maps, some ShadowPlay footage. Stuff which can't just be redownloaded. And I don't have any recent backups anywhere.

I am aware that unless there is a spectacular failure, data can usually be recovered from drives which spontaneously clutch their proverbial chests and collapse to the floor. However I don't exactly feel like paying Seagate to recover my data from their glorified paperweight. What would be the best course of action, do you chaps think?

 

[USAFRet]

1. Don't copy 175GB all at once.
2. Your SSD is too full. Generally that only affects write speed, though.
3. Is it 'just slow', or completely dead?

 

[Kill3rCat]

1) Why not?

2) I suppose, but when I first started it was going at 17MB/s, then dropped to around 1-2MB/s, and for a brief moment was being measured in hundreds of bytes/s, before it spiked back up into KB/s.

3) Just extremely slow, but so slow as to be practically useless.

 

[USAFRet]

1) Why not?

2) I suppose, but when I first started it was going at 17MB/s, then dropped to around 1-2MB/s, and for a brief moment was being measured in hundreds of bytes/s, before it spiked back up into KB/s.

3) Just extremely slow, but so slow as to be practically useless.

1. Couple of reasons. You're trying to shuffle a couple of hundred thousand files.
And in a Move operation. If, for whatever reason, it dies in the middle...you will have NO idea of exactly where. It does not copy things in a neat sequence.


What happens if you try the COPY (not move) in smaller chunks of data?

 

[Kill3rCat]

I suppose I will have to find out.

Edit: Inexplicably, it just spiked to around 23MB/s, and now has dropped to 1.8 MB/s again.

Edit2: After a few minutes at 1.8 MB/s, now it's gone back up to around 10 MB/s.

I don't know what is causing these fluctuations. Any idea?

 

[USAFRet]

I suppose I will have to find out.

Edit: Inexplicably, it just spiked to around 25MB/s, and now has dropped to 1.8 MB/s again.

Possibly due to heavy fragmentation in the source drive.

 

[Kill3rCat]

Hmm, possibly. But when moving from the SSD, I observed the same fluctuations.

 

[Kill3rCat]

On a side note, I looked back at the images I just sent. Why would a later screenshot show a lower completion percentage? Wyrd.

Edit: Nevermind, it would appear I derped and got them the wrong way around. :/

 

[USAFRet]

On a side note, I looked back at the images I just sent. Why would a later screenshot show a lower completion percentage? Wyrd.

That, along with the time estimate, are often completely incorrect.

 

[Kill3rCat]

Yeah, sure. The time estimate is just that - an estimate. But the percentage indicates how many files have been moved. Since it keeps track of the number of moved files during the operation, and the number of files is summed at the start of the operation, the percentage would be more or less accurate I should think. Sure, it doesn't account for file size, but there's no reason the percentage would drop.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. As I stated, I got the images in the wrong chronological order.

Since the write speed is now hovering at a (relatively) stable 20+MB/s, I think I'll just leave it to complete. In the future, I think I will move the files in smaller batches - thanks for the advice.

Edit: Is it just me, or does 25MB/s seem like a slow transfer speed for moving files from an SSD, to an empty external drive? I have heard that external drives often tend to write much slower than they read - I'd assume the same applies to normal hard drives anyway.

 

[dudeman509]

Small files write to spinning disks MUCH more slowly than large file chunks, especially if write cache is full (moving tons of stuff) or isn't on. Fragmentation on the read drive doesn't help, either.

 

[Kill3rCat]

Yes, that makes sense. Thanks dudeman509 and USAFRet for your advice.