sometimes file copy takes long time

on my dad 7 year old laptop, some time copying a small word/pdf file of 4-5 pages takes one minute or more to copy from one folder to another

this is random problem

Paul Black said:

Hello @makhan10,
Is it copying to a folder on the same Drive, another Partition, an External Drive, or USB?

from download folder to documents folder both on same drive

Laptop drives are often very slow generally.

You say the problem is occasional and seemingly at random.

My first guess would be that something else is occupying the disk or CPU at those occasional times.....perhaps a virus scan or a defrag operation or whatever. I'd look in Task Manager to see what other processes are ongoing whenever things are slow.

Do you ever notice slowness during normal operation when NOT copying?

Is this laptop actively maintained....or largely ignored and just regarded as an appliance, like a refrigerator?

AV (anti-virus) may sometimes slow down copy operation, ex. copy operation or file access cannot complete until AV scan is complete.

you can try to turn of AV or real time protection to confirm, although beware that Windows defender is known not to respect this option instantly, ex. pending or scheduled scans.