USB 3.0 hard drive transferring EXTREMELY slow

[futurefields]

Suddenly my USB 3.0 hard drive is only transferring files at 4mb second. What do you guys think? Hard drive gone bad? It's a year old and barely used more than a handful of times, never been dropped or mishandled.

it's this product in 750gb form >

http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-2-5-.../dp/B004FLQF0E

 

[futurefields]

Trying to back up my Borderlands 2 steamapps folder to external USB 3.0 hard drive. both usb cables plugged into usb 3.0 ports...

 

[HOSED]

There seems to be many people having issues with this drive (amazon reviews). I would backup any data on it immediately then look into returning it.
When I was in the market I got a Vantec enclosure + installed a Seagate 500 MB drive - total cost ~ 80.00 US
If you want to Troubleshoot run error checking, try different ports or different USB 3 computer. Also take a look at the SMART data. There is a chance it could be the cable also.
Hope this helps
WOW ... is the drive anywhere near full and/or badly fragmented?

 

[futurefields]

Nowhere near full. But the weird thing is, when I tried copying the Witcher 2 folder it went up to 60mb/sec and sustained between 50-60, which after googling is in the normal range (albeit the slower end of normal for usb 3.0)

Is it possible there is something about the files in the Borderlands 2 folder that could cause a slower transfer speed? seems odd to me.

 

[PliotronX]

Nowhere near full. But the weird thing is, when I tried copying the Witcher 2 folder it went up to 60mb/sec and sustained between 50-60, which after googling is in the normal range (albeit the slower end of normal for usb 3.0)

Is it possible there is something about the files in the Borderlands 2 folder that could cause a slower transfer speed? seems odd to me.

There can be more overhead over USB (any version) with small file transfers but you should be seeing on singular large files at least 90MB/sec. Get yourself a Passport or Canvio 🙂

 

[Dahak]

The other thing to is if it hits alot of small files, I have seen the the speeds go down in general and then speed backup once it hits larger files. Ive seen this across all external drives, flash, usb2, usb3

 

[Phynaz]

Yeah, it's the 11,000 small files, all that seeking to wrote the small files slows the crap out of the drive.

 

[Topweasel]

That's an average of less than a meg per file so yeah between the windows file transfer system and how a HDD writes files I am not surprised to see a copy rate that low. If you watched it closely it probably bounced up quite a bit when it got to a file of substantial size.

 

[shabby]

Had a similar issue with an internal drive, turned out it was the psu.

 

[jkauff]

Yeah, it's the 11,000 small files, all that seeking to wrote the small files slows the crap out of the drive.

One way to test this is to create a single ZIP or RAR archive with all the files, and copy the large single file to the other drive.