Slow Copying/Moving Files

Hi,

Just finally finished building my pc. . . . SATA, XP Pro x64. It has an Asus
(A8V-VM SE, micro ATX, K8M890, Socket 939) mobo, 2x1G twin sticks of RAM, ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler, Corsair 620W PSU, an AMD Dual Core Processor and a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s 320Gb hard drive . It runs really fast now except when I'm moving or copying files . . . it literally freezes my pc and I can't do anything else until the file has finished moving or copying. This has been a problem since the pc was built. The pc was originially built with other parts, i.e., single core processor, etc.

I performed an HD Tune test and the hdd came through with flying colors. I also ran SeaTools for DOS, and no problems were found. Windows Chkdsk found no problems either.

Considering the other parts of my pc, I thought that the problem with moving/copying would be gone, but it's still there.

I just ran Drive Speed Checker. It shows that my hdd's ability to move/copy files is slow. I attached a copy of the test results.

It could be said that the speed is a good speed, but my pc shouldn't freeze so that I can't do anything else until the move/copy is finished.

Does anybody have any thoughts or ideas about how I can fix this problem? Since the hdd is in really good shape otherwise, I don't want to spend the money to get a new hdd.

Please let me know what you think.

Fred? This baby is now named Fishy

 

If you're copying files from different locations on a single drive (like from C:\folderA to C:\folderB) that can be a bit slow, even on higher-end PCs. Your screenshot shows that a 10mb file is moved in under a second. That's not bad, perhaps not great, but you're in the fast 'half' of the chart. If you're copying files across different drives (like from C:\folderA to external drive E:\folderB) that should be quicker unless you don't have USB2.0 enabled in the system BIOS. Go into your BIOS and take a look at the USB settings. Also, most BIOSes (is that a word, "BIOSes"?) allow you to just press a key to use Optimized Settings. Try that and see if helps. There could be a BIOS setting that is slowing things down (like maybe a caching setting somewhere). Also make sure indexing is enabled on the drives in question, and make sure they're defragged; use a third party defrag program in addition to the Windows built-in defragger, it isn't that great and typically needs help from another defrag program. Here's a few I've used and they work well:
Auslogics http://www.majorgeeks.com/Auslogics_Disk_Defrag_d5266.html (my personal favorite)
Defraggler http://www.majorgeeks.com/Defraggler_d5777.html
Diskeeper Lite http://www.majorgeeks.com/Diskeeper_Lite_d1207.html
JK Defrag http://www.majorgeeks.com/JkDefrag_d5542.html and the JK Defrag GUI http://www.majorgeeks.com/JkDefrag_GUI_d5620.html
IOBit SmartDefrag http://www.majorgeeks.com/IObit_SmartDefrag_d5318.html
There are others in the Drive Utilities section here at Major Geeks http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads8.html All the above programs are totally 100% free and I have personally used them all and they're all pretty freekin' good. I like Auslogics; it's fast and easy to use. JK is great; it is probably the most thorough defragger I've ever seen and can take a few hours to completely defrag a large drive, but when it's done, you know it's defragged. The others have fairly high ratings here at MG and do a good job. I run Auslogics every 3 or 4 days, and I use the Windows defragger immediately after Auslogics twice a month or so.
Good luck! I hope this helps!

[dlb]
:major

 

Any antivirus software running?

 

Hi dlb and foogoo.

I'll answer the easiest questions first. I have only Avast running constantly but I use Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, and SUPERAntiSpywarePro at least once a week. If I think I have a problem, I run BitDefender Online Scanner, F-Secure Virus Scanner and Panda Software Antivirus ActiveScan. I haven't used the last 3 in the past few months because all the little quirks that I had disappeared when I did a format.

Indexing is enabled on all drives and I've checked Optimize Settings.

For deframenters, I use Power Defragmenter GUI and then I follow up immediately with Windows Defragger. The combination of the 2 work out very well. I defrag at least once a week, sometimes 2. I'll try the ones you've mentioned too.

I also have Advanced WindowsCare V2 Personal. It does a great job cleaning my pc of junk files in my registry, other junk files, and spyware files. It also runs a Privacy Sweep and deletes the list of files that I've opened and my history. It has a System Optimization Feature and a Startup Manager. I run this program 2 or 3 times a day. I also flush my DNS once a day.

My int hdd is a Seagate Baracuda, SATA. The hdd has no problems that I've seen. When I transfer files, it could be from a partition on my int hdd or from one ext hdd to another. Some of my ext hdds are USB 2.0, some are firewire and some are SATA I and/or SATA II. I have 17 ext hdds but they're never all turned on at the same time. The most is usually only 6 or 7.

Everything, and I'll repeat everything, else works great except for moving or copying files. It takes about 2 minutes to move a 750,000kb file from one SATA drive to another SATA drive. The SATA drives are connected only to an adapter card, no HUBs involved, and the same with my firewire ext hdds. Some of my USB 2.0 drives (the ones I use the most) are connected to my pc and the others are connected to HUBs, some daisychained. I see no difference in speed when transferring a file from one USB 2.0 ext hdd to another USB 2.0 ext hdd than when I'm moving a file from a SATA drive to another SATA drive. It's always takes about 2 minutes.

The time it takes to copy/move files is unexplainable and I'm disappointed because I thought that they would copy/move in less than a minute due to the dual core processor and the SATA drives.


When I formatted my pc, the option to use my floppy drive as first in bootup sequence was removed. I had to use the DVD/ROM drive.


The problem that my pc always almost freezes until a file has finished copying/moving is my major complaint/concern. I've checked and double-checked all of the connections both inside my computer and on the ext hdds/HUBs. I purchased and swapped out 10 new cables in case the contacts weren't good.


I have 2 questions:


Since I have USB 2.0 ext hdds, wouldn't I have to have USB2.0 enabled in the system BIOS?

I don't know anything about cache settings. Are they in BIOS or in Windows?

 

Check if the drive is running in UDMA 5 mode or has downrated itself temporarily. It can happen if it has seen repeated CRC errors. You can check under
control panel->system->hardware->device manager->IDE channels.

EDIT: like DLB said, check if the drives are fragmented. Copying is a sequential file access operation and is particularly badly hit by fragmentation. Fragmentation of the files or of the free space may result in reduced copy/write performance especially for large files. Analyze and use a good defragmenter to defrag it. I personally use Diskeeper 2008 in background defrag mode, but it's not free, though you can still get the free trial versions at their site.

BTW, just because SATA-II is theoretically rated at ~300 MB/sec (i.e.300 Gbits/sec, or 150 Gbits/sec in case of SATA-I), does not mean that you'll ever hit those speeds in real life. The best you can hope for is 40-60 MB/sec. With the newer large capacity drives, it'll be better; for eg, when I am copying stuff onto a freshly formatted 500GB/32MB cache Seagate 7200.11 from another identical drive (both internal), the best I hit is about 80-85 MB/sec. With external drives, i.e USB2.0, it's going to be much, much slower.

 

I should be transfering files from 1 ext SATA drive to another ext SATA drive faster than transfering files from 1 USB 2.0 drive to another. I was expecting my SATA drives to be at least twice as fast as my USB 2.0 drives but they're not. Their speeds are the same as USB 2.0. 2 minutes for each 700Mb file, no matter the drive.

My main concern is that I can't do anything else when I'm moving/copying files. When I try to highlight a file on a drive that isn't involved in the copying/moving, it won't highlight until the copying/moving has finished. If I try to force it, by right clicking on the file name again, everything freezes for about 5 to 10 seconds and then the copying/moving continues and the file is highlighted, but I go through the same thing when I've changed the name and click on something else or click on Enter to change the name . . . another 5 to 10 second freeze.

I didn't see anything in UDMA 5 mode but I attached a copy of my Device Manager with IDE opened.

Since I opened Device Manager, I see that it lists my dual core cpu 2 times. Should it be listed 2 times?
.