USB 3.0 speed drops when transferring files

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michalkacer

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Oct 10, 2013
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Hi all!

When copying large files from my Win 8 computer to an external hard drive, the transfer speed is initially very high (>100 MB/s), but after a short while drops to 20-30 MB/s.
Note that the external drive is connected to the PC's USB 3.0 port using a USB 3.0 cable. I do have write caching enabled in Windows and the external drive set to "Better Performance". I have also tried TeraCopy - which is slow, too.

HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F3, HD502HJ (500 GB)
External HDD: WD Elements USB 3.0 (750 GB)
OS: Win 8.1 64bit
MB: MSI P67S-C43 (B3) - P67

Here's a screenshot of what I mean:
2vlllwg.jpg

Can I do something to keep the high speed steady?

Thanks in advance!
 
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michalkacer

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Oct 10, 2013
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Even if those burst speeds are common, I'd expect the speed not to drop below, say, 40-60 MB/s. After all, it's not USB 2.0.
Anyway, I have Windows set to automatically defragment my drive (currently says 0 % fragmented). Ran a scan with Avira, all clean.
I tried copying the same file from a newer Win 8.1 laptop (which has a SSHD drive) to the same external drive and the transfer speed never dropped below 90 MB/s...
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
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Hi there michalkacer,

First of all, you need to make sure that your USB 3 drivers are up to date.
If the drivers are up to date, and your WD Elements has good transfer speed on another laptop, then I guess you should run some testing on your primary drive. You can test it with some kind of brand specific testing software. I guess that a third party one will do as well.
Defragging it, as iceblitzed already suggested, may be a good idea as well.
You try to copy one large file right(not lots of small ones)? If this is not the case, you can try that.

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD
 
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michalkacer

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Oct 10, 2013
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Thanks for the tips. How do I update my USB 3.0 drivers, though? I used the Live Update utility from MSI (my MB manufacturer) and also the Intel Update Utility, but neither of those said that USB drivers needed updating. I could do it manually, if I knew where to download from.
Here's what Device Manager says about my USB controllers:
256cj8n.jpg

As for testing the drive, I ran a test using HD Tune a few days back and the minimum speed was about 70 MB/s.
And yes, I only test the speeds with one large file (~ 3 GB), not many small ones.
 
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R

riopelnet112

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Jan 28, 2015
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The fact that you observe a drop of speed after a short time when writing to your USB key is most presumably due to your operating system writing buffered: For performance reasons your OS does not write directly to the USB key but to a so called buffer cache, assuming that it isn't really necessary to write the files immediately.
 
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michalkacer

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Oct 10, 2013
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Thanks for the solutions, everybody. As pointed out, those "USB 3.0 ports" I thought my PC had, were in fact only USB 2.0, only the PC case had it labeled like SuperSpeed ports.
 
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pdqpat

pdqpat

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Jan 2, 2016
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The previous solution I posted lasted a short time, so back to write speed less than 1mb/s on 3 different 128GB USB 3.0 keys on a ASUS T102HA with USB 3 port

I now write large files to a 64GB key at 20 mb/s which is at least usable. Oddly enough, I ran the Windows USB Troubleshooter from Microsoft and error message says: "This usb controller is in a failed state" That doesn't sound good! Still searching...
 
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