USB 3.0 Drives became suddenly slow and stuck in transferring

[Airbus580]

I have 2 64GB Sandisk Ultra USB drive formatted to NTFS just weeks and days ago (including yesterday) it was fine transferring files (from hard drive to USB) at a fast pace speed and without hanging but this day these 2 USB drives transfer rate suddenly slowed or when transferring large files (>1GB) the transferring will hang (e.g. transferred 18GB files but it slowed (as low as less than 10mb/sec) and stuck but it will take a very loooooooooooong time to complete the transfer more than 30 minutes.

I tried copying a single 2GB file and it became stuck at "5 seconds remaining" for how many minutes before it finished (this does not happened before). I check HD Tune for errors but all blocks are green. Tried using system restore but still the problem persists.

I tried uninstalling the USB from the device manager and the problem still persists I tried different USB ports including 2.0 including the mobo USB ports but still the same. I somehow have a temporary solution by reformatting it to FAT32 or exFAT I call this temporary because I need to transfer files larger than 4GB and in my experience NTFS transfer rate (from hard drive to USB) (reaches as high as 100MB/S) is faster than FAT32 or exFAT (average transfer less than 10MB/S)

I bought these drives early this March.
OS:Windows 7 x64 Pro
Ram;16GB
MOBO:ASROCK X99 WS

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there.

I'd recommend that you try out those flash drives with a different computer and/or device, to see if the same thing happens again. Other than that you could try reinstalling or updating the Universal Serial Bus (USB) controller's driver (not just uninstall the flash drives from Device Manager), to see if that fixes things up.
I'd also suggest that you run a diagnostic test on your drive as well, by using its manufacturer's diagnostic tool, as the issue might be caused by a faulty SSD/HDD.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Airbus580]

The hard drive I am transferring from (to USB) is a seagate internal hard drive and an external hard drive WD elements but mostly I transfer from the external drive. I checked the WD elements for errors in chkdsk but none found and HDSentinel gives it a 100% health and performance. Running the WD Elements in quick test in Data Lifeguard resulted in a pass
edit: somehow my WD Elements became unallocated but I tried to plugged it in on another computer and it shows fine.. wt??
edit UPDATE: somehow I was able to properly show my WD Elements on my computer again.
edit UPDATE1: Even my Sandisk Extreme 64GB USB drive is acting the same problem also that I bought a week after I bought the Sandisk Ultra.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

It really sounds like it's possible that you're experiencing some issues with your USB storage devices due to USB faults or system issues. You could try restoring your system to a previous point (one before those problems occurred) via System Restore, to see how it behaves. In the meantime try those USB flash drives with a different computer as well and transfer some data to see what happens.
Make sure that all of the motherboard's drivers are up to date as well. You could also run a full scan with an antivirus program, to see if any threats pop-up.

 

[Airbus580]

I did scan for viruses in safe mode but none found, my BIOS is up to date, I did try to find restore points beyond 5 days but there's nothing beyond that. What I find odd (since the problem started) is that this problem happens every time when transferring (>1GB files) from Hard drive to USB, but when transferring from USB to Hard drive it rarely happens..

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Try the flash drives with a different computer to confirm that the issue is with this system exclusively. Maybe you could check if you have an update for your chipset drivers as well. If it's an OS issue, perhaps updating it might fix things up (of course if there are any available updates at all).

 

[Airbus580]

I tested the Sandisk Ultra with a USB 3.0 port on a laptop that has Windows 10 installed and the problem persists there (transferring dips as low as 10MB/s but it does not stuck/hang at transferring and sometimes goes up to 50MB/s and then goes back down to 10MB/s) but in terms of completion time the Windows 10 Laptop is faster than when I am using my Win 7 Pro x64 Desktop...
It took me at least 30 min (or more) to transfer a folder worth 17.9 GB while the laptop took only 15 minutes using the same folder to my Sandisk Ultra
What I noticed on my Win 7 Pro x64 desktop is when transferring that (17.9GB) specific folder is that it stuck/hangs at transferring while a specific file is being transferred (i.e. at least 1GB or more in size)

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well there might be an issue with the drive you're copying from and if the data you are referring to is corrupted, this might be causing drops as well as hangs while you're transferring the files.
Basically besides testing the drives with a diagnostic tool and updating all drivers I've already mentioned, you could take the PC to a computer service shop to have it diagnosed and hopefully fixed (if there's a hardware issue).

Please keep me updated.

 

[Airbus580]

But when I tested my SanDisk Extreme USB on my Windows 7 x64 desktop the hanging/stuck/stalling disappears and a constant transfer rate (i.e.not going very high to very low transfer rate vice versa)...
The hanging/stalling/stuck and dips happens only on both (2) of my SanDisk Ultra 64GB USB
The drives were tested using NTFS format
I tested again the SanDisk Ultra USB drives using Teracopy software yet while the transfer rate is very slow (avg of 3.8 MB/s), the hanging/stalling/stuck seems to disappear... I don't know maybe this is really an OS issue (especially for NTFS)? But what about the case of my SanDisk Extreme USB drive that has no problems as my Ultra USB drives?

April 2 update: I updated my UEFI to 3.10 from 2.10 and the INF driver but still the problem persists stalling while transferring and stuck at 5 seconds remaining for 6 minutes (transferred a 2GB mp4video file)...

Again though, the only supposed fix (if not using Teracopy) for my SanDisk Ultra USB drives (on my Windows 7 x64 Pro) is fomatting it to exFAT or FAT32 but at a cost of slow transfer rate less than 15MB/s

 

[Airbus580]

I benchmarked one of my Ultra drives in CrystalDiskMark on a Windows 10 laptop and a Windows 7 32 bit laptop/notebook (both USB 3.0 ports)
MSI GS60 2QE Ghost Pro 4K (2QEUi716SR51G) WINDOWS 10 Home Single Language (without SSDs) (http://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-GS60-2QE-Ghost-Pro-4K-2QEUi716SR51G-Notebook-Review.134510.0.html):

Asus K43SV WINDOWS 7 Home Basic 32 bit (https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/K43SV/):

I have yet to test my main Win 7 Pro x64 Desktop as I am at work right now will try to post later

 

[Boogieman_WD]

If it's really an OS issue, you could try a fresh install and see if you get the same results. However, this can be a bit of hassle since you'd have to install and configure all the drivers and programs you've had before, so it's understandable if you're not too thrilled about that option. On the other hand, you could make a system image and restore everything just as it was, in case the fresh install does not change the results.

 

[Airbus580]

Here is the benchmark using my Win 7 x64 Pro Desktop:

I am shocked that this has the same benchmark as the Windows 7 laptop, maybe it is really a Windows 7 issue no matter what edition is it? and Windows 10 has a better handling at my USB 3.0 drive?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Either that or there's some sort of incompatibility issue. It could be the USB controller drivers, chipset drivers, flash drive's firmware, OS, etc. Unfortunately I can't really figure it out as well as nothing seems to have given result so far. You could get in touch with Microsoft's customer support and ask about what could be causing the speed differences between the two operating systems.

 

[Airbus580]

How do you do a clean install of the USB drivers without reformatting? I would reinstall the old USB drivers back when I just built my PC a year ago and see if it solves my problem...
I don't know but does SanDisk even provide Firmware downloads or tools for their Flash Drives?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

I seriously doubt that there's a firmware update tool for flash drives. I just mentioned that it could be some sort of incompatibility issue, but not that it can be fixed if this is the case. Try the chipset drivers.