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[Question] Computer slows down while transferring files

X

xmatrix

Junior Member
Hello,

When I do a large file transfer or multiple file transfers my computer gets extremely slow during the process. Slow meaning that to open the web browser it struggles and while typing search terms in google there is lag. That's just one example, other's being opening programs.

Last night I reformatted my computer because I thought maybe it had something to do with it. But no luck because after the clean install was complete I transferred about 600gb back on the computer and during this process tried to view the properties xpadder (Right click-> Properties) and the entire system froze. A hard reset and I started the process all over again, tried watching tv using windows media center and it worked but flipping through channels was extremely slow and it is not usually.

I'm trying to solve this problem and maybe see if others are experiencing the same.

I think my hardware is more than capable:

Windows 7 x64
8gb of Ram
1tb WD Caviar Black
ATI Radeon 4890
Gigabye P55-UD6 rev1.0
Enermax Modu 82+
Corsair H50

some background info:

I originally had my computer overclocked but after a Bios upgrade I couldn't get the same results so It is currently stock speed.

Computer is only a year old.

Running temps are around 40-45C

Harddrive temps are normal (40-48C)

I have completed a full check disk and monitor the harddrive with CrystalDisk Info (SMART Utility) and it seems 100%.

Thanks.
 
Transferring files means your Hard Drive is busy. When you ask it to then do another task it is of course going to be slow.

No mystery here.
 
DirkGently1 said:
Transferring files means your Hard Drive is busy. When you ask it to then do another task it is of course going to be slow.

No mystery here.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Opening anything else means it needs to be pulled from the hard drive. However, your hard drive is already busy transfering that file so it does both things at once. The downside is, doing both things at once just causes both things to be slow as hell.

Just because you may not "think" doing something involves the hard drive... it usually does. Even something as stupid as right clicking for a menu.
 
I am fully aware that those processes use the hard drive, but shouldn't there be some sort of middle ground to allow multitasking. The transfer shouldn't have full priority over everything else that is going on, otherwise you will not be able to do anything during the transfer time.
 
In theory Win7 has I/O priorities so if explorer tells the OS to handle those requests at a lower priority it should be fine. In reality, I/O is so slow and has such high latency that it's impossible to prioritize seamlessly to the end user. Next time you're doing a copy check out Resource Monitor.
 
Tho I do have to admit that seems kind of out of wack 🙂 Don't have any other recommendations besides defrag. I can copy multiple things at once without a problem just sometimes the transfer speed gets slower.
 
To be clear, you're transferring a large number of files within the same disk, or across disks?
Or across a network?

If it's across a single disk, do you have a secondary drive ( external USB drive, USB thumbdrive) that you can try copying a large number of files across and see if the problem persists?

If it's across your network, can you verify the problem doesn't occur when doing disk-to-disk transfers?

Trying to narrow down who the culprit is.

You said you reformatted your machine and the problem persisted -- are there any programs that you immediately install that might follow with the program? ( Anti virus, cd emulator, etc etc ?)
 
xmatrix said:
@Nothinman, are you suggesting that nothing can be done? I am sort of confused with you reply.
Click to expand...

You can buy an SSD to run as your primary drive. The 1TB HDD you have will do excellent service as a secondary, data drive. This is the the setup that a lot of people use now, and with that the traditional I/O bottleneck is a thing of the past.
 
just what do you mean by file transfer, u have to give details
and yes most likely you are kicking the sh*t out of your harddrive, you need more than one drive if you are going to do big transfers while doing other sh*t or an ssd.
 
xmatrix said:
@Nothinman, are you suggesting that nothing can be done? I am sort of confused with you reply.
Click to expand...

Pretty much. If there's I/O going on there's going to be additional latency and for some reason that affects the Windows UI a good bit. There's no way around that even with the I/O priorities that MS added in Vista/Win7.
 
well he said multiple..when you have many things hitting a drive at once its performance goes through the floor. just go to storagereview or something and look at sequential vs random access performance.
 
Even web browsing when installing apps is slow sometimes, because the HD (with a platter HD) is slowed down so much. Platter HDs don't like to multi-task, you need to step up to an SSD if you plan to do work at the same time as big file copies.
 
OP, I don't see where you mentioned what you were copying to/from. Is this network copying, or USB2 to internal drive copying, or..?

I have seen what you describe (slow copy, high CPU usage), but I don't remember what I did to fix it.

Are you certain that all of your HD's are connected to the native Intel contollers, and not something like a jmicron alternate controller? Are you using the standard microsoft ATA drivers? Check the ATA/ATAPI controller settings in Win7 management. Your drive should be in ultraDMA mode. I'm sure it possible for it to get stuck in something like PIO mode, but I haven't seen that in Win7. Check your BIOS settings as suggested by Emulex. Changing to AHCI mode may or may not require a reinstall of Win7 (google it first).
 
Sorry to clarify, I was copying from an external hard drive using usb 3.0 to my internal master drive. I think there might be a problem with the hard drive it self because it seems nosey when the computer is basically idle and also a few days ago it was loading web pages extremely slow to the point where it wouldn't load the forum. I suspected the internet however all my other devices were lightning fast. Just seems strange..... I think the best thing is to buy two new hard drives - one for OS and one for storage. At least then I can't go wrong.
 
usb has extremely high cpu overhead. esata would be far wiser.

also make sure your profile has caching enabled.
 
xmatrix said:
Sorry to clarify, I was copying from an external hard drive using usb 3.0 to my internal master drive. I think there might be a problem with the hard drive it self because it seems nosey when the computer is basically idle and also a few days ago it was loading web pages extremely slow to the point where it wouldn't load the forum. I suspected the internet however all my other devices were lightning fast. Just seems strange..... I think the best thing is to buy two new hard drives - one for OS and one for storage. At least then I can't go wrong.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. So far, we've got:
1. Don't trust USB to not eat resources
2. Enable AHCI (set HKLM\System\CCS\services\msahci\Start to 0, reboot, turn AHCI on in the BIOS, save, and boot back into Windows).

IMO, AHCI on Windows 7 is a must. What you are really after is enabling NCQ, which Windows automatically does, if AHCI is enabled. Benchmarks don't tell the whole truth. NCQ makes a night and day difference to multitasking in Windows 7, with platter drives. That one thing could very well be your entire problem, if it is not enabled.

Also, for your mobo, just to be on the safe side, ensure that your HDD is plugged into one of the blue SATA ports, which are Intel's.

If you are being accurate in your descriptions, things are running slower than they should be. I've done more or less what you did, even setting up Xpadder while copying over data 😀, very recently, and had only very minor lag while restoring data.

If you are worried about the drive, get and run WD'd diags, and run the extended test. If SMART clearly shows your drive is bad, you can trust that. All SMART values being OK does not mean that the drive is in good health, though.
 
So where is this fabulous superfetch?

This issue is remindful of when I bought a new computer with VISTA on it. Large file transfers hogged the machine. I couldnt play a movie while doing the large file transfers and I do a lot of video. Neither I nor was anyone else able to solve this problem so I downgraded to XP. Other people would report a similar problem. In addition, some people had similar complaints about slow network.

The only conclusion I could come to was that VISTA OS simply didnt work well in certain hardware and I took a lot of heat in the forums for saying that.

Whatever.

Ive got a lot lesser machine than you Im sure (old 3.06 P4) and I can rip two movie DvDs to HDDs while watching a movie without stutter using XP. On my core2 notebook which came with VISTA, I couldnt even transfer a file from an external drive to the local while playing a movie file. Switching to XP was the work around and Ive been satisfied since.
 
Last edited:
allin1 said:
Guys, I think it's only natural when you copy a large file to another network or something even if you have a higher RAM. I agree most people here say "there's no mystery in it" 🙂
Click to expand...
Except that he's describing needing a typeahead buffer, and the computer freezing. I put my stuff under I/O strain all the time, with far lesser CPUs, and only experience the most minor of lags--just enough to let me know it's still working an HDD. I can listen to music, watch videos, play some video games (depends on how much they need the HDD), etc., in Windows 7. Our HDDs should be comparable, RAM comparable (for desktop use, 8GB is 8GB), and his CPU socket doesn't have an SKU as slow as my CPU available for it.
 
When you are transferring large files, it is somewhat analogous to rush hour on a freeway. You do have bandwidth limits, and as they are approached, traffic slows. In general, the fix is better work management by the user.
 
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