Originally Posted by
Asturias56
I'm getting more and more frustrated as copying to a USB2 stick on my machine gets slower and slower - running W10.
Any suggestions to improve performance?
I can't really see how the USB end could change. Any change would seem to have to be the other end, the hard (or SSD) drive or the OS.
Make sure your PC has had a proper reboot.
Do [shift]Shutdown. This ensures a full shutdown.
Wait until it has shutdown.
Remove as much power as possible.
Laptop: remove charger and if possible remove battery. Wait a minute or two, start it back up.
Desktop: remove mains lead. Wait a minute or two, start it back up.
You should do a full restart every few weeks at the longest (I wouldn't bother with the full power removal unless you have problems.)
https://www.quora.com/What-does-Shif...-in-Windows-10
How many files/bytes are you copying?
Are the files being copied over a network?
Make sure you are only running one virus scanner. Nowadays for individuals Microsoft Defender seems to be the recommendation. If you use anything else make sure defender is OFF. That is what I do.
Also check that there are no driver issues (red warning triangles) in ControlPanel/DeviceManager. Doubt this could be a problem as I guess it wouldn't work at all, but worth a look.
If your are copying a lot of files consider making sure that you are not updating a directory window with each file copied. e.g. drop (or right click and choose Paste which is much less error prone) the files onto the drive using the left hand pane. Windows makes it a priority to make sure that directory windows are up to date. This is nice, unless you are copying a lot of files. In that case it can cause delays and consume a lot of system resources.
Try the xcopy command instead. If you are not familiar with the DOS command line this may be quite painful. You will find out about current drives, current directories, the cd command, and the like. xcopy does not copy subdirectories unless you specify "/s"
xcopy *.* d:\ /s
Will copy all files and subdirectories from the current directory to the root of the d: drive.
For large numbers of files or even a few big files the robocopy command can offer a BIG improvement. Use the "/MT" switch and it will copy multiple files simultaneously. This can be an especially big help with network copies. The default is up to 8 simultaneous files but you can change that.