Freezing external hard drives


  1. Posts : 3
    Dual boot Win 7 Home premium 64bit, Windows 8 Pro 64 bit, Windows 10 Tech Preview 64 Bit
       #1

    Freezing external hard drives


    I've been trying to transfer files to several external hard drives of mine in order to clear up space on my HDD, however every time I do begin a transfer, it will only do so for about 2-3 seconds, and then the transfer rate will drop rapidly until it is 0mb/s. It remains stuck there until windows notifies me that something went wrong during the transfer process. Has anyone else had the same issue/know how to remedy?
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 56,806
    Multi-boot Windows 10/11 - RTM, RP, Beta, and Insider
       #2

    Fetherlyt said:
    I've been trying to transfer files to several external hard drives of mine in order to clear up space on my HDD, however every time I do begin a transfer, it will only do so for about 2-3 seconds, and then the transfer rate will drop rapidly until it is 0mb/s. It remains stuck there until windows notifies me that something went wrong during the transfer process. Has anyone else had the same issue/know how to remedy?
    Gonna need a WHOLE lot more info... update your sys specs with drives, and tell HOW you are transferring files. What type of ext drives? Details..... What "something" went wrong?
      My Computers


  3. Posts : 3
    Dual boot Win 7 Home premium 64bit, Windows 8 Pro 64 bit, Windows 10 Tech Preview 64 Bit
    Thread Starter
       #3

    Well that's just it, I dont know exactly what went wrong. It's just a simple message that windows gives me after about 10 or so minutes of it being frozen, only after that allowing me to access the drive and cancel the transfer. I have a WD My Passport and My Book, both USB 3.0, that I am trying to do transfers to by dragging and dropping from my download folder to the drive folder. I've even tried zipping the files thinking that maybe that would help having them be compressed. I don't believe it is my hard drive itself because it is actually performing phenomenally under windows 10 and I can move, write, compress, etc on that drive freely. Just updated more of my system specs, hope that helps
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 56,806
    Multi-boot Windows 10/11 - RTM, RP, Beta, and Insider
       #4

    Fetherlyt said:
    Well that's just it, I dont know exactly what went wrong. It's just a simple message that windows gives me after about 10 or so minutes of it being frozen, only after that allowing me to access the drive and cancel the transfer. I have a WD My Passport and My Book, both USB 3.0, that I am trying to do transfers to by dragging and dropping from my download folder to the drive folder. I've even tried zipping the files thinking that maybe that would help having them be compressed. I don't believe it is my hard drive itself because it is actually performing phenomenally under windows 10 and I can move, write, compress, etc on that drive freely. Just updated more of my system specs, hope that helps
    Only thing that comes to mind right now is that drag 'n drop sometimes will get choked. Repetitive drag/drop quickly can result in a high thread count in explorer. Try simple copy/paste or cut/paste, single or in multiples. Another alternative is to use something other than explorer, like Tera-copy (freebie).
      My Computers


  5. Posts : 5,286
    Win 10 Pro x64
       #5

    Yeah, try the copy-paste and then delete the original file. And try to do it by smaller groups of files rather than 1 big chunk.
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 3
    Dual boot Win 7 Home premium 64bit, Windows 8 Pro 64 bit, Windows 10 Tech Preview 64 Bit
    Thread Starter
       #6

    That seems to have done it. Thank you. Still, wish something as simple as that wouldn't choke up the OS =/
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 56,806
    Multi-boot Windows 10/11 - RTM, RP, Beta, and Insider
       #7

    badrobot said:
    Yeah, try the copy-paste and then delete the original file. And try to do it by smaller groups of files rather than 1 big chunk.
    Yeah, what he said! Explorer does get freaky when it has to many things at the same time. Here's a decent explanation of explorer doing too many things asynchronously. Asynchronous vs synchronous execution, what does it really mean? - Stack Overflow
      My Computers


  8. Posts : 56,806
    Multi-boot Windows 10/11 - RTM, RP, Beta, and Insider
       #8

    Fetherlyt said:
    That seems to have done it. Thank you. Still, wish something as simple as that wouldn't choke up the OS =/
    Glad to hear I could help (and bad-robot from up north) and you got it fixed. Just a quirk of the OS. All OS's have their little slippery spots!
      My Computers


 

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