Why Your External Drive May Get Slow: 6 Reasons
Discover the six common reasons why your external drive may get slow in this troubleshooting guide! From understanding disk fragmentation and insufficient power supply to outdated firmware and cable issues, we’ll explore the potential culprits behind slow external drive performance. Whether you’re using a USB hard drive, SSD, or flash drive, knowing how to identify and address these issues can help restore your drive’s speed and efficiency.
- Overview of the Problem
- Cause No.1: It’s Been a Long Time Since You Run Disk Defragmentation + File System Check
- Cause No.2: Logic Errors, Bad Sectors
- Cause No.3: Several Applications Are Working With The Disk In an Active Mode
- Cause No.4: Torrents and P2P Software
- Cause No.5: Insufficient Power, USB Ports
- Cause No.6: Damaged Disk
- Questions and answers
- Comments
Overview of the Problem
However, sometimes an external drive may become slow, and for no obvious reason for that – nobody dropped it, hit it or put it underwater etc. What can be done in this case? Let us try and review all of the most widespread problems and their solutions.
Important! Before writing about the things that make your HDD slow down, I would like to say a couple of words on the speed of copying and writing information from an external disk. I will start with examples.
When you copy one big file the speed will much higher than with copying a number of small ones. For example, when you copy an AVI file of 2-3 Gb to the disk the speed may be ~20 Mb/s, and when dealing with a hundred of JPG pictures it will drop to 2-3 Mb/s. That is why it is better to compress the hundreds of pictures you have into an archive first and only then send them to another disk. In this case, the speed will not be so slow.
Cause No.1: It’s Been a Long Time Since You Run Disk Defragmentation + File System Check
Windows does not always place files on a disk in one big piece in one place. As a result, before getting access to a certain file, all those pieces have to be read, i.e. spend more time on reading the entire file. If there are more and more such pieces on your disk, then its performance and overall system performance will slow down. This process is known as fragmentation (in fact, things are not exactly that way but they are better to be explained in simple language to help every user understand the principle).
To improve the situation, a reverse process should be performed – defragmentation. Before launching it, clean the hard disk of junk (unnecessary and temporary files), close all resource-intensive applications (games, torrent clients, films etc).
How Can You Launch Defragmentation Of an External Disk?
Go to Computer (or This computer, depending on your operating system version). Click the right mouse button on the necessary disk and go to its Properties. In this tab, open Tools and click Optimize.
In the window that appears, Windows will inform you on the status of disk fragmentation and if it needs to be defragmented.
File system can have a considerable influence on fragmentation (you can see its type in disk properties). For example, FAT 32 system (once very popular) does work a little faster than NTFS but is more vulnerable to fragmentation. Moreover, it does not allow placing files larger than 4 GB on the disk.
Cause No.2: Logic Errors, Bad Sectors
In general, you may not realize there are some errors on your disk because they can be accumulated for a long time without showing their presence in any way. Such errors most often emerge because of incorrect addressing of software, a conflict of drivers, sudden blackout (due to a power cut), or hang-up while the computer addresses the hard disk actively.
By the way, Windows often launches a utility to scan the disk for errors after rebooting (many of you could notice that when trying to switch on the computer after a blackout).
As to the external disk you’d better check it for errors with the help of Windows. To do so, go to Computer, then click the right mouse button on the disk and go to its Properties. The next step is to click Tools tab and select the function Check to examine the disk for file system errors.
If the computer hangs up when you open Properties tab of the external disk, you can launch disk check from the command prompt. To do it, press the combination WIN+R, type in CMD and press Enter.
To check the disk, you should type in a command of the type: CHKDSK F: /F/R, where F: – the disk letter; /F/K – unconditional check with correction of all errors.
A couple of things about bad sectors
Bad sectors are the hard disk sectors that cannot be read. When there are too many of them in your hard disk the file system cannot isolate them without affecting the disk performance (and its operation in general).
Cause No.3: Several Applications Are Working With The Disk In an Active Mode
A very frequent reason for the disk to go slow – even if it is not external – is the heavy load.
For example, at the same time you may be downloading several torrent files to your disk, watching a film from the same disk and checking the same disk for viruses. Can you imagine the amount of hard work you have given to the disk? Quite naturally, it may start slowing down, especially if it is an external HDD (and to make things worse, it’s got no additional power supply).
The easiest way to see how loaded the disk is at the moment is to enter the task manager (by pressing CNTRL + ALT + DEL or CNTRL + SHIFT + ESC).
There may be some “hidden” processes to load the disk which you will never see without the task manager. We recommend closing all running programs and watch the disk behavior: if your PC stops hanging up and slowing down you can see what program was spoiling the fun.
Most often these are torrent clients, P2P software (see more below), video editors, antiviral software and other applications meant to protect your PC from viral threats.
Cause No.4: Torrents and P2P Software
Torrents are all the rage now and many people buy an external disk to download information right there. There is no problem in that, but often the external disk slows down during this process – the download speed drops and a disk overload message is displayed.
In order to avoid this error and accelerate the disk performance you should adjust your torrent client accordingly (or any other P2P application you use): reduce the number of simultaneously downloaded torrent files to 1 or 2. In the first place, their download speed will be higher then, and in the second place, the disk load will be less intensive; make sure that files from one torrent are downloaded one after another (especially, if there are many of them).
Cause No.5: Insufficient Power, USB Ports
Some external drives nay need more power than your USB port supplies. The matter is that different disks have their own starting and operating currents: i.e. the disk will be recognized when connected to the computer and you will see the files but the work with them will be very slow.
By the way, if you connect your disk to the front panel USB port, try connecting it to USB ports in the back panel instead. Operating currents may also be insufficient when connecting your external HDD to netbooks and tablet PCs.
There are two variants how to check if that is the reason and eliminate the slow-down problem related to insufficient power supply:
- Buy a special USB connector, one end of which should be connected to two USB ports of your PC (laptop), and the other end should be connected to the USB port of your external drive;
- You can find on sale USB hubs with supplementary power. This variant is even better because you will be able to use it to connect several disks or any other devices at once.
Cause No.6: Damaged Disk
It is quite possible that your disk is nearing its end of life, especially when you observe the following, in addition to slower operation:
- your disk emits a rattling sound when connected to the PC and you try reading some data from the disk;
- your computer hangs up when addressing the disk;
- you cannot check the disk for errors because the software just freezes;
- the LED on the disk does not flash, or Windows does not recognize the disk at all (by the way, in this case your data cable may have been damaged).
An external HDD may be damaged with a slight hit (even if you think it was a slightest one). Try to remember if you happened to drop anything on the disk.
There was a case when a small book fell onto the disk from the shelf. Absolutely all right by its appearance, with no cracks or scratches, the disk made the computer freeze, emitted a rattling sound and so on. The computer came back to normal state only after the disk was disconnected from the USB port.
In conclusion to this article, we would like to note that any of the said six causes that make your external disk go slow can also result in loss of your data. That is why if your disk contains important data and you started noticing its incorrect work, we recommend that you create a backup copy of such data. It is important because there are high chances you may have to use data recovery software or address specialized service centers.
This article solved such a frustrating issue for me, I didn't realize I was bottlenecking my drive when I pluged it into a usb hub. Cheers!
HGST Drives are to blame. Every single time I plug any HGST drive into an external drive we max out at 6 MB/Sec. We have a external drive that can hold two drives. The WD runs as it should be the HGST runs at 6 MB/Sec. Took the HGST drive into a Rocketfish drive same thing. When you contact the HGST to a computer directly to the SATA controller on the MB you get 133 MB/sec as it was spec'd out to do. Youc an take the actual USB 3.0 port and run a flash drive test and the flash drives and SDD's perform exactly the way they should.
Have to add, that its not just one of the HGST's its all of them. We took them out of our server because they were slow at 133 MB/sec compared to Seagate 225 MB/sec. We switched 3 of them out and the same thing. WD and seagates worked fine. The only difference is that the HGST's were enterprise . but they worked fine with Windows 10 and Server 2008. We're going to phase the HGST out or sell the to others in systems. so that we dont have to deal with it.
how can export my files from loading slow hard disk??
Does the speed of the internal hard disc matters? I'm using a WD MyPassport 2TB which is showing a Read and Write speed of about 120 MB/s but when I transfer some files to it I get maximum 60-70 MB/s. I'm using a USB 3.0 port. Thanks.
Disk read speed depends on their type, disk capacity, interface, and the size of the cache is also very important
I'd like to find out more? I'd love to find out some additional information.|
We are glad that our article was helpful for you. If you have any questions, we will gladly answer them. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu-D9QnPsAPn7AtxL4HXLUg
Thank you for the helpful article! Is there a possibility to fix a damaged disk? I know mine fell once and I'm afraid that's the case. The computer can find and read it, but is just too slow to upload anything to it and sometimes freezes. Thank you.
You need to quickly save all the necessary data from this drive to another hard drive. Soon, this disk may completely fail, because it has received physical damage.
wonderful post I read so far. The information is much helped me.
Sorry but i encrypt my hard drive with bit locker and it was fine but some how one day i decrypt it and some how i unplug the hard drive but the decrypt process never complete making my hard drive slow. would i be able to fix the slow or not?
hello my hard disk was working fine but now and one drive is not opening and other drives are opening but too slow i cant even format the corrupted drive.Pls some one help me i have lots of data present in it...
Run Hetman Partition Recovery and make an image of your corrupted drive (until it failed completely). You can restore your data from it. https://hetmanrecovery.com/how-to-recover-deleted-hard-drive-ssd-partitions
I've been using an external 4TB WD "MY BOOK" drive (Model Number WDBBGB0040HBK-NESN) which seems fine, except that it is routinely unresponsive for about 20 seconds every time I try to access, or save to, a file. Do these drives go into sleep mode or do I need to update the driver?
Open WD Drive Utilities (if you have installed), select the 4TB WD, go to Configuration and check if Hibernate Mode is ON or OFF. I have it enabled but maybe you would like to disable. If you don't have WD Drive Utilities, go to Windows Control Panel + Energy Options + Advanced + Turn off HDD after "x" minutes with battery and AC. You should disable that option. I have it enabled. See pictures below https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dfe29e3598f6666d0deb1a8517c62e1c79ce32119f6b18a2b586abe465d13315.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0291c03036ed20c6f76c5a1b99ef83e1289b209ac8dc3bb2806660f4858e97d1.jpg .
Thank you, Gonzalo. This is the best help I've gotten so far on the subject. I may have deleted the WD software but it's on another same model drive on a different computer. The one that got bricked by a Windows 10 automatic update. (That's another story.) I will initiate the instructions post haste. Appreciate your input!
i have a problem with my hard drive, before its was working alright then i decided to change the windows i did that and everything was successful but hen i want to replace the hard drive to its original position unfortunately it fell to a hard floor but not too high. i fixed it to my computer and it came to the screen windows error i tried formatting it once again but its super slow when formatting. don't want to lose my files please what should i do. is there any possibility that u can help me save my hard drive
Unfortunately, it seems that your disk is damaged in result of fall. I recommend you to contact with disk repair service. After repairing the hard drive you can try to recover your data with Hetman Partition Recovery: https://hetmanrecovery.com/hard-drive-data-recovery-software
Hi, I m very much impressed with your article and explained in such a that any lay man can understand. Very informative and helpful. It is my good fortune to see such Wonderful article..... Really happy.
Hi. I have 1TB WD external HDD. It had a very bad hit about 2 weeks ago. It dropped from a reletivly high desk to hard floor. I checked it after, and It was fine, all good. But 2 days ago, I was watching a video file on it, and it suddenly froze. Hanged up the lap top. After I removed and reconnected it, it's super slow. At first windows can't recognize it and it's like a not formatted disk. Sometimes it even doesn't show up the disk in the drive's list. After a while when windows recognizes it, it's super slow, it hangs when you want to open the folders. It's basically unusable. What can I do to save my data on it, and maybe possibly bring th HHD back to life? It's almost full it has only 30GB free space in it. I used the check disk with the CMD, this is the results: C:Windowssystem32> CHKDSK E: /F/R The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is Elements. Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ... 209152 file records processed. File verification completed. 5 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed. Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ... File record segment 150016 is unreadable. 214310 index entries processed. Index verification completed. 0 unindexed files scanned. 0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found. Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ... Security descriptor verification completed. 2580 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal... 9485136 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed. Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters in user file data ... A disk read error occurredc00000a3 The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters detected in file 433 of name XXXXX. A disk read error occurredc00000a3 The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters detected in file 43B of name XXXXXX. A disk read error occurredc00000a3 The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters detected in file 43C of name XXXXX. A disk read error occurredc00000a3 The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters detected in file 43D of name XXXXX. A disk read error occurredc00000a3 The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters detected in file 43F of name XXXXX. A disk read error occurredc00000a3 The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters detected in file 440 of name XXXXXX. Windows replaced bad clusters in file 2E49 of name XXXXXX. A disk read error occurredc00000a1 The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters detected in file 6731 of name XXXXX. The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters: 2:00:56 detected in file 674F of name . This process was very slow, it had about 4-5 hours left on the ETA, but it got finished suddenly.
It looks like your disk is damaged. Try to make an image of it using Hetman Partition Recovery. And continue restoring your data from this image.
Hi.. Have the same problem as above... But the data from the hard disk still gets copied but at a very very slow rate... And also shows error with few files saying that the file might be damaged but the file when played works properly.... Other than that no sound issue or anything.. But the data copy/ paste works way too slow... So is there any possibility that the USB port of my HDD drive is damaged or the whole drive is damaged? And also if just the USB port is damaged then can I replace it in some computer shop? My HDD is WD Ultra Passport 1TB USB 3.0
I do not think that the reason is in USB port....
my hard disk is very slow pls help
Hi! All reasons why your external drive may get slow described in this article. Didi you try it?
I'm having issue with an older drive, it'll only transfer at around 100kb/s (or less) maybe perhaps it's either going bad or i need to reformat and run a hard drive program on it for errors. While prices for a new hard drive isn't bad it's still quite a bit of money and i do have my data backed up on newer drives so mainly i use the older drives for everyday usage and if they crap out, just swap them out for a different one. I will say you should get a hard drive monitor such as Crystal Disk Info (or CDI). It's detecting bad hard drives long before they crap out. I still have one running for over a year so i know not to put any important info on it without backing it up first.
The article is very useful who has the drive. But I want to say that the external hard drive is a very cool thing. And who does not let them try to buy not expensive, and you will realize how convenient it is. What I have written in the article would mention defragmentation is to treat the logical error. when a drive starts to hesitate. You just need to bring order to the sectors, that is, to remove the empty spaces and do the sorting. This helps make the defragmentation. I personally do it every month and my computer is running very fast. In conclusion, I say do as it is written in the article everything is very well set out.
Well, if your device is used as a portable storage of movies or music, you will hardly ever face the problem of the defragmentation necessity. If not, I’d like to add that the more capacity your external device has, the more time it will take to complete the actual defragmentation. Insufficient power may occur in case of a situation when several devices are already plugged in other USB slots, and your external drive suffers from the lack of power supply.
What steps can a user take to prevent their external drive from becoming slow or failing?
Is it possible to recover lost data from a failing external drive?
Yes, it is possible to recover lost data from a failing external drive. However, it is not always possible to recover all of the lost data, and the success of the recovery will depend on the extent of the damage to the drive. If the drive is severely damaged, it may not be possible to recover any data. In such cases, it is best to seek professional help from a data recovery specialist.
How does a user's operating system impact the performance of an external drive?
The operating system of a user's computer can have a significant impact on the performance of an external drive. Different operating systems have different specifications for how they handle external drives, and this can affect the speed and reliability of data transfers. For example, Windows and Mac OS X both have different ways of managing external drives, which can lead to different performance levels. Additionally, some operating systems may not be compatible with certain external drives, which can also affect performance.
Can overheating cause an external drive to slow down or fail?
Yes, overheating can cause an external drive to slow down or fail. When a drive overheats, it can cause the components to become damaged or malfunction, which can lead to data loss or corruption. Additionally, overheating can also cause the drive to become sluggish or unresponsive, which can make it difficult to access files or perform other tasks.
What is the best way to optimize an external drive's performance?
Read about six reasons why your external drive may get slow. If you do have any questions, don't hesitate to contact our technical support service - we will be happy to help you.