WD 4TB USB 3.0 external drive slow write speed

[ddragonballz]

Hi. I purchased a Western Digital EasyStore USB 3.0 portable hard drive. It is transferring at ~50 MB/Second. I plugged it in to my front mounted USB SS (3.0?) with blue sockets using the supplied 3.0 cable. I'm transferring 300 GB worth of stuff from my PC to the WD EasyStore. At this rate, it's estimating 23 hours.

I have a Dell XPS 8500 with i7-3770 CPU @ 3.4 GHz

50 MB/Sec seems slow to me

 

[Solandri]

USB 2.0 has a theoretical max speed slightly over 40 MB/s, with real-world top speeds closer to 30-35 MB/s. So the fact that you're getting 50 MB/s indicates the USB 3.0 port is working properly.

Unfortunately, reviewers and enthusiasts concentrate on a drive's sequential speeds. Because sequential speeds are the fastest, it also happens to be the least important. The slowest transfer speeds will take the longest, and thus will be the cause of most of the time you're waiting for the drive. So it's the 4k (small file) random read/write speeds which have the greatest impact on your overall transfer speeds.

For HDDs the 4k speeds are still down around 1 MB/s. Depending on what's stored on your drive, the overall transfer speed can vary between 1 to 120 MB/s. If you have a lot of big files (e.g. movies) your speeds will be closer to 120 MB/s. If you have a lot of small files, your speeds will be closer to 1 MB/s.

https://cdn2.techadvisor.co.uk/cmsdata/reviews/3449074/wd_my_passport_4tb__2016__-_crystaldiskmark.png

With the mix of file sizes most people have, I would expect about a 30-80 MB/s average transfer speed. Windows time estimate varies depending on the speed of the files it's transferring at that particular moment. So if it's busy with a bunch of small files, a time estimate of 23 hours (3.6 MB/s) is not unexpected.