Seagate Backup Plus Slim 4TB - 20MB/s write speed

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Michael Trenton

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Feb 4, 2015
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So I bought a Seagate Backup Plus Slim 4TB a few weeks ago and when I first started to use it I went into disk managment on my Windows 8.1 computer and formatted the drive, giving it a name and drive letter of my choice.

I then proceeded to transfer around 50-60GB of data from another drive and noticed how surprisingly slow the write speeds of my new Seagate drive was; it constantly remained between 18-22MB/s through the whole transfer while task managment said it was running at 98% capacity.
I also tried it with a different computer a few days later transfering about 250 GB which took around four hours if I remember correctly, also with the drive running constantly at 98% capacity while only writing around 20MB/s.

Is this normal?
I even thought this 4TB drive was supposed to be faster than my other 2.5'' USB powered external drives (which are all usually writing at 80-100MB/s) as it is basically two 2TB 2.5'' drives in an enclosure configured in RAID 0 (at least that's what I thought). :??:
 
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SuperSoph_WD
Hello again, @Michael!

Well, formatting it shouldn't have such a negative effect on the HDD, so I'd definitely rule it out as the source of the issue. Unfortunately, though, it's not uncommon for sensitive hardware products like hard drive to get damaged while shipping. You should most definitely give it one last shot by backing up all your data from the hard drive and reformatting it. If the poor performance/transfer rate is still present afterwards, you should definitely get in touch with the manufacturer's customer support and send your RMA request to them. Since the HDD is still within the warranty period, you should be able to get a replacement from them.

Good luck! Hope I was helpful! :)
SuperSoph_WD
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Michael Trenton

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Yes. USB 3.0 all the way.

And those are also the same USB 3.0 ports and 3.0 cables that I use for my other external drives which all works perfectly so I really feel there must be something to do with the drive itself.
 
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

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Jul 30, 2014
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Hey there, @Michael Trenton!

So you did try using different USB 3.0 cables with the external drive, right? I'd suggest you backup the data from it somewhere else as well and make sure it's safe. Since the drive is performing poorly on any system you connect it to, then you should definitely run the HDD manufacturer's brand-specific diagnostic tool to check up on the health and SMART status.

The HDD is relatively new, so you should be able to send an RMA request and replace it, once you get in touch with the manufacturer's customer support for assistance.

Keep us posted with the troubleshooting & SMART results, though!
SuperSoph_WD
 
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Michael Trenton

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Feb 4, 2015
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Thanks for your reply. :)
Yes, I've tried using different USB 3.0 cables, or rather I've used the very same USB 3.0 cable with no less than four other USB 3.0 drives during the last two days and all of them performed as fast as expected, so I fully expect there must be a problem with the disk itself rather than any of the ports or cables.
I think my main fear is that I somehow screwed up the drive when I formatted it in disk manager (could this happen?). I wished I had also tested the drive right out of the box prior to formatting. it I think I'll back up the data I have on it and then format it all over again and see if that makes any difference. If not then I'll probably see about returning it since it's still under warranty.
 
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

Glorious
Jul 30, 2014
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Hello again, @Michael!

Well, formatting it shouldn't have such a negative effect on the HDD, so I'd definitely rule it out as the source of the issue. Unfortunately, though, it's not uncommon for sensitive hardware products like hard drive to get damaged while shipping. You should most definitely give it one last shot by backing up all your data from the hard drive and reformatting it. If the poor performance/transfer rate is still present afterwards, you should definitely get in touch with the manufacturer's customer support and send your RMA request to them. Since the HDD is still within the warranty period, you should be able to get a replacement from them.

Good luck! Hope I was helpful! :)
SuperSoph_WD
 
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Michael Trenton

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Feb 4, 2015
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So the latest update on this is that I tried reformatting the drive (instead of NTFS I opted for exFAT this time around) and did some more testing of file transfers and to my surprise things seems to have improved. Instead of around 20MB/s write speeds I'm getting between 95-130MB/s now.
At first I did a test transfering a small 12GB folder with many small files and write speed was just barely dropped below 100MB/s, but mostly stayed 110-120MB/s if I remember correctly. After that I took the chance of transfering 1,3 Terabyte worth of huge ProRes videofiles and again the write speed stayed above 100MB/s for almost the entire transfer, usually around 120-130MB/s.

I don't know what caused the drive to be so slow the first times I used it, but it seems to work fine now so I don't think I'll RMA it unless it starts acting up. I probably won't risk putting any important data on it (at least not without first having backed up the data elsewhere, but I'll keep using it for now.
Thanks for all ÿour help and suggestions though. :)
 
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dustpuppy42

Aug 23, 2018
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I have a Seagate Backup Plus 4TB Portable and I was experiencing the exact same issue. The drive would show 100% active time in task manager, but the transfer rate would be abysmally slow (100kb/s) after copying a tiny amount of data. Initially I blamed my backup software but it had nothing to do with that. I couldn't even start Crystal HD mark. The drive would take a while to show up in windows explorer after being plugged in.

In fact, I have two of those drives, I bought them for offsite backups. I was previously using them with Crashplan but because the Crashplan UI is not very informative, I was unaware of these performance issues. Only after switching to another backup solution (Arq Backup) did I realize the drives have a serious problem (exact problem for both). They also had the same problem on another computer. I tested a variety of USB cables, tested different USB3 ports.

I ran SMART tests and a variety of tests on SeaTools for windows 10, none of them revealed any issues.

I tried the device manager write cache, didn't make a difference.

What finally solved the problem, and I can't explain why, was destroying the partition, recreating it (using the drive manager in windows 10), and doing a FULL format (NTFS). The drive performance is back to what I expect now (read/write 130mb/s).
 
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