Slow Copying to USB
 

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?

Can you change to USB3? Much quicker, I avoid USB2 these days whenever possible. You might need to add a USB3 expansion board if your kit will take it.

I bought a couple of cheap USB thumbdrives the other day looking for an easy way to get some files to friends. Turns out that copying 8GB of photos is going to take most of a working day due to the fact I got USB 2.0 drives.... I'm stuck with them now as I'm not going to buy new ones but I will need to plan the copying bit so that it runs during the night for example.

Bottom line: get USB3 drives next time!

USB3 is 10x faster so well worth going for.

However, USB2 speed is 480 Mbps (Mega bits per second) or approximately 48 Mega Bytes per second. It should therefore be possible to transfer 8GB in about 3 minutes over USB2.

..but Windows is really slow at copying lots and lots of files between disks. Even allowing for the compression and expansion it can be much quicker to zip all the files into a single archive file and then copy that file to the memory stick. If the files are already compressed (eg jpg images), or if you have plenty of space then set compression to 'off' when you create the archive which speeds things up a bit more.

It's a bit more complex than that in my case. JPG files, lots of them, on a MacBook but the USB drive (having a USB-A interface) is on a Satechi dongle which is plugged into one of my USB-C ports. When I started copying the speeds were nowhere near 480 Mbps, so it would not surprise me if either the dongle is slowing things down, or (more likely) the USB drives are just a lousy quality. I only need to transfer them to my family members, once they've got them they can throw the USB drives in the trash where they belong.

Zipping them into a big archive gets me a file that the drive's file system won't accept, and reformatting the USB drive may throw up other issues. Oh well....

mine is a USB2 machine - and probably cheap USB sticks :(

I keep thinking of upgrading to a new machine but then someone comes along with some paying work and ...

I don't want to go through the pain of finding out what well loved and necessary programs won't work in the Modern World - then trying to find replacements..

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.