Windows 10: External Hard Drive Is Slow

Is there a bug in the Windows or hardware interface to external hard drives?


This question has been asked indirectly in nearly every forum over the last decade and is usually associated with image backups of any sort. Why the focus on image backups? Because they take "forever" at best, and days when this problem arises. ("Forever," of course, is anything more than 1 minute to we impatient geeks.)


The solutions I've found (100's of them) involve a variety of high-level actions such as turning off the antivirus, defragmenting, shutting off group policy, …. After any of these actions are taken there is the typical reboot and try the job again. I think the KEYWORD here is reboot.


Here is what I have observed the last three times I have had the problem:

1. I am using Windows 10 Pro with a Seagate 8TB Hub external drive on a USB 2 port.
2. When I start the included Windows 7 Image Backup, my drive has been offline for a month.
3. After I plug the drive in Windows checks it out for about five minutes before bringing it online.
   1. (This delay does not happen for a boot-up with the drive already connected.)
4. At that point, I start Backup and it transfers at about 1MB/s per Resource Monitor.
5. I reboot and start the backup again.
6. The transfer rate is now above 50 MB/s.

:)

 

External Hard Drive

Hi John,

We suggest that you try the troubleshooting steps below:

• Open your External Hard Drive file in File Explorer.
• Type the name of the file you want to search on the search box and click Enter.

The file will show up in Search Results and you will be able to move it to the correct folder.

Let us know if you need further help.

 

External hard drive not recognised

Thanks for this. I've done what you suggested and been through all the steps mentioned in the article. The hard drive works fine on a Mac computer, and I've managed to copy the information on it. It must be a Surface issue so I'll try to get a chat line tomorrow.

 

External Hard Drive

To address your concern, here are the troubleshooting steps that you can try. Follow the steps below:

Uninstall and reinstall the external hard drive program.

• In the Settings app, go to System.
• Go to Apps & features and locate the external hard drive program.
• Uninstall the program and go to the manufacturer's website to reinstall the updated version.

Uninstall and reinstall the Paragon driver software.

• Following the same steps mentioned above, locate the software in Apps & features
  and uninstall it.
• After uninstalling the software, go to the manufacturer's website to reinstall it.
  

To further isolate your concern, we'd also like to verify if the OneDrive app is enabled on your PC.

You can hit us back for additional help.

Kind regards.