USB 3.0 Drive Slowing Down

Greetings,

I've already tried asking this in the HP forum.

I purchased a HP drive, and it was working great. For the first few months, copying my backup files (about 300 GB), only took one hour. Then it started slowing down. It now takes five or six hours.

I've tried plugging it into another USB 3.0 port.

I've checked the drive for errors, and the drive isn't fragmented. I can't find anything physically wrong with the drive. Is there a software issue that could be causing it to slow down?

There is a tutorial that says you can speed up a drive by enabling Disk Write Caching, but according to the manual, the drive came with write caching disabled (page 14).

Thanks,
Shane.

The only quick things I could suggest are to check that your files that you copy are not small, and that the drive you are copying from and to are not fragmented.

Backup files (as in system image files) tend to be one single file with only a few items in each. These should show as copying at high speed, probably around 60 to 80 Mbs.

Copying user files such as several hundred or several thousand very small files may slow down to just 10 to 20kbs (yes that slow).

Have you expanded the drop down option when copying files to see the actual speeds and how/when they might vary ?

I've checked the drive for errors, and the drive isn't fragmented.

I use Robocopy for backup, and I only backup user files, not applications or system image files. I have two external drives. The other drive still works fine, so backup takes about an hour. The HP drive is slowing down, even though I'm backing up the exact same files.

Thanks,
Shane.

If you have two drives and are duplicating backup files then would it be worth formatting the HP drive and starting afresh and seeing if the speed returns ?

I formatted the drive (quick format), and it is slightly faster. A backup takes about four hours, when it should take one.

Shane.

I'm just seeing what speeds I get to a USB 3 drive. You mentioned 300Gb in around an hour so that is around 83Mb/S. That seems in the right ballpark as I averaged a very consistent 65-67Mb/S in a test.

Why not try copying the same file with Explorer and see what speed it reports.

I was getting 15 MB/s.

Shane.

That is slow. Have a read at this and see if you can confirm you have a USB3 driver enabled.

How to determine whether a USB 3.0 device is operating at SuperSpeed? Microsoft Windows USB Core Team Blog

Hi,

I am using this tool which is based on USBview to determine USB 3.0 device capabilities:

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtreeview_e.html#download

Choose your corresponding bit version once unzipped. It's a portable version so no installation required.

Cheers,

fdegrove said:

Hi,

I am using this tool which is based on USBview to determine USB 3.0 device capabilities:

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtreeview_e.html#download

Sorry for the delay.

I've downloaded and run the tool.

I'm looking at all the information for the affected port, but I can't see anything wrong. Can anyone help me? I've uploaded the report.

Thanks,
Shane.