Windows 11 Slow File System

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I have about 7,000 files to copy from the drive on my desktop to an external USB HDD.  I was using RichCopy to copy the files.  It was running extremely slow.  After 2 hours, I stopped the process.

There was one folder containing 81,000 files which I wanted to delete.  Windows Explorer was used.  It was deleting files at a rate from 1 file/sec to 16 files/sec.  That was unacceptable.  The USB drive was removed from my Windows 11 system and connected to my laptop Windows 10 system.  The delete ran at 120 files/sec to 280 files/sec.  The process was completed in about 6 minutes.

I’ve also noticed when copying a file from one folder to another by dragging the file name, there is a predictable hesitation in Windows 11.

This system was “upgraded” to Windows 11, 4/16/2022.

Any clue on the dismal file performance?  Are there some settings I need to change?  Should Microsoft examine their implementation on Windows 11?

This is TERRIBLE performance!

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I wonder if the USB port on the slow system is the older speed standard. Look at the ports and see if it’s black, or blue or yellow. If you can find a blue port, try that and see if the speed is better.

USB 2 = typically black ports (sometimes white)

USB 3 = typically blue ports (sometimes yellow)

Speeds between the types are dramatically different.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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Are you using an Antivirus suite (McAfee, Norton, etc.) many of those slow down file operations?

If not then yes it may be a subtle Windows 10/11 problem; Whenever there are many files to process reboot the computer because Windows now seems to be arbitrarily less resilient while working with many thousands of files during a loop at once.

Also please check the file system on the USB drive to see if there are some minor issues. From past experience when NTFS has some minor errors file operations can become slow. The fix was running chkdsk C: /f to verify and clean up the file system.

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All ports on the motherboard are 3.1 Gen 1.

Your post caused me to choose another port.  The system has also been rebooted.

I wish I had an explanation but on the second try, the 7,400+ files were copied in 24 minutes.

Thank you.

On a side note.  When the delete operation was removing 1 – 6 per second, I got ticked off.  Canceled the operation.  Clicked the icon in the task bar to eject the USB drive.  It said something else was using it.  Instead of shutting down the system, I pulled the plug.  This left the destination folder in a state with the following Attributes SHI.  Fortunately I remembered the attrib command.  Once those attributes were reset, the destination folder became visible.  The resetting of attributes was done on the laptop.  At this point, all is well with the world.  Windows 11 seems to be functioning as expected.

Thank you.

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In regards to 7000 files to USB…

It’s not so much the number of files as the number of bytes.  USB is far slower than the internal hard drives, which are many times slower than SSDs.  I don’t recall the speed differences, but USB 2 is very noticeably slower than USB 3 or 3.1.  One of the ‘gotchya’s of using USB is that it is necessary to have both a USB 3 (or 3.1) port AND USB 3 (or 3.1) device for it to run at USB 3 speed.  If either one is USB 2, it runs at USB 2 speeds.  It’s also possible that the USB 3 port(s) on your computer require a USB 3 device driver that may not have been installed.  I’m an ASUS motherboard user, and they come with separate USB 3 device drivers to get USB  3 speeds out of the builtin USB 3 ports.

Note, too, that comercially produced ‘external USB drives’ are frequently older, slower drives, even out of production, and oftentimes with USB 2 connections.  They work, but incredibly slow in todays’ environment.

As I noted above, it’s more about number of bytes than number of files, although processor speed and internal hard drive speed, as well as other running processes also contribute to a slow down.  For what it’s worth, my own copying 4000 .mp3 music files to a USB 3 drive to use in my car takes a good 20 minutes or so.

Also, a couple years ago, I had to recover a friends 6TB of videos from his scrambled Windows drive.  I used my USB external drive bay (I can insert any SATA device into it) and had to let it run all night to copy the data to a spare drive I had available.  In short, while USB is lightning fast compared to floppy disks of old, they’re turtles compared to internal SATA drives.

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“USB HDD” – lets find out its capabilities. Use crystaldiskmark or some such and find out what it will do connected to present port, then disconnect it, reboot, and connect it to the “offending” port and try crystal again, and see. So now you know its capabilities. If both are the same, then, yes, probably something else was enqueued on it. It happens.

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Antivirus really slows down your computer. Try to disable it for a while and check, maybe it will work faster.

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Disabling virus checker would be unwise.

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I have no issue with AV slowing my computer(s) over the last 20 years.

What AV do you find slows your machine?

cheers, Paul

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