Question Strange transfer speed issue between SATA SSD & M.2 SSD ?

[Nefariouz32]

System spec:
X570 Aorus Elite
Ryzen 3600
32Gb (4x8 ddr4) gskill ripjaw v series c14 3200

Sata: Kingston a400 960gb (old game drive)
M.2: wd black sn850x 1.8tb (New game drive)

Ran crystaldiskmark on the Kingston sata ssd and it comes back with what I would expect. Mid 400s mb/s read and mid 300s mb/s write. Works totally normally for gaming at its intended speed.

My issue is that I'm trying to transfer my old game install files over from the old Kingston sata drive to the new wd m.2 drive. The xfer speeds are painfully slow. Like 2 to 4mb/s while transferring (copying) files from one drive to the other. It's very strange because I transfered a couple of games already and it was in the mid 200s mb/s for the first few games and then suddenly it dropped to 2 to 4 mb/s. I have restarted, checked to make sure trim is enabled, write cache is enabled, firmware up to date on Kingston drive.

System usage shows Kingston drive sitting pegged at 100% usage with the m.2 hardly even being utilized, not even 1%. There is something strange happening with my Kingston drive on transfers suddenly and it's driving me nuts. I could just re download everything but I want to figure this out and get it working. Used drive optimizer on both drives, no change.

Any suggestions on what I could try next?

 

[CountMike]

System spec:
X570 Aorus Elite
Ryzen 3600
32Gb (4x8 ddr4) gskill ripjaw v series c14 3200

Sata: Kingston a400 960gb (old game drive)
M.2: wd black sn850x 1.8tb (New game drive)

Ran crystaldiskmark on the Kingston sata ssd and it comes back with what I would expect. Mid 400s mb/s read and mid 300s mb/s write. Works totally normally for gaming at its intended speed.

My issue is that I'm trying to transfer my old game install files over from the old Kingston sata drive to the new wd m.2 drive. The xfer speeds are painfully slow. Like 2 to 4mb/s while transferring (copying) files from one drive to the other. It's very strange because I transfered a couple of games already and it was in the mid 200s mb/s for the first few games and then suddenly it dropped to 2 to 4 mb/s. I have restarted, checked to make sure trim is enabled, write cache is enabled, firmware up to date on Kingston drive.

System usage shows Kingston drive sitting pegged at 100% usage with the m.2 hardly even being utilized, not even 1%. There is something strange happening with my Kingston drive on transfers suddenly and it's driving me nuts. I could just re download everything but I want to figure this out and get it working. Used drive optimizer on both drives, no change.

Any suggestions on what I could try next?

Antivirus may be interfering by checking everything transferred.
Also try this
https://www.easeus.com/pc-transfer/fast-file-transfer-software-for-pc-free-download.html

 

[Nefariouz32]

Oh! You might be on to something! I did Uninstall avast yesterday and turned windows defender back on. This actually lines up.....I never even connected the two but this is a real possibility. 😳

Also, thanks for the suggestion for the software. I will investigate both, thank you!

 

[geofelt]

When writing lots of data to a ssd(any ssd) the receiving device will eventually fill up whatever cache it has and have to start transferring data to the device at nand write speeds that are nowhere near the cache performance.
That is normal, just be patient.

 

[Nefariouz32]

When writing lots of data to a ssd(any ssd) the receiving device will eventually fill up whatever cache it has and have to start transferring data to the device at nand write speeds that are nowhere near the cache performance.
That is normal, just be patient.

This would be normal if the individual transfer started fast and slowed down, but i was getting consistent fast speeds and then suddenly each subsequent transfer started at the low speed. I am used to seeing a speed spike in the beginning and then tapering down but 2 to 4mb/s (consistently for the entire transfer) is not the usual for me.

 

[geofelt]

The process will proceed at the speed of the most restrictive device.

 

[Nefariouz32]

The process will proceed at the speed of the most restrictive device.

well since the original folders (hundreds of GB worth of transfers) all proceeded at a good speed (with the behaviour you described, around mid 200s gb/s to begin with and then tapering down to 40-80mb/s for the long duration) but now these subsequent transfers (starting at 2-4mb/s and staying at 2-4 mb/s) how would one go about clearing the cache again so that the files could once again transfer at the previous speed? I don't think caches are hundreds of gb but i could be wrong? *all transfers happened between the same two drives, sata ssd to m.2 ssd*

 

[geofelt]

The devices will clear their own caches when they can.

Writing to a ssd starts quickly on an empty drive.
The only write needed is to an empty nand block and there will be many of them.
After sufficient writes, there are no fully empty nand blocks available and the process needs to do updates to store data.
That is a read/rewrite process that takes longer.

 

[Nefariouz32]

So. This escapes me, but instead of copying the next file over, I cut/pasted it over and I am now back to 250mb/s average transfer speed between drives. It appears that only copying between drives is limiting me to 2-4mb/s. I find this strange as, isnt a cut/paste just a copy+delete? I couldnt imagine this is a CPU issue as CPU usage is only hitting around 30-35% during this process.

 

[Nefariouz32]

And now it's even weirder. I just cut/pasted a huge folder (100gb) within a couple of minutes with a consistent 250mb/s transfer speed. Now I just cut/pasted the original folder that was very slow for me (about 50gb) and its back to 4mb/s. Different folders are copying over at massively different speeds, even though in this case, the smaller folder is going much slower. I find this very odd.

 

[CountMike]

And now it's even weirder. I just cut/pasted a huge folder (100gb) within a couple of minutes with a consistent 250mb/s transfer speed. Now I just cut/pasted the original folder that was very slow for me (about 50gb) and its back to 4mb/s. Different folders are copying over at massively different speeds, even though in this case, the smaller folder is going much slower. I find this very odd.

Depends on what's in a folder. Folder itself doesn't mean anything. it's just a list of places/addresses where files are.
Unlike HDD, SSD doesn't place data consecutively.