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I have 2TB of WD external hard drive.

I use windows Vista 32x. on DELL laptop Latitude D630 and connect through USB cable.

When I transfer from my C drive to external hard drive it transfer only 3KB/sec.

It take 30min to transfer 6MB.

It is useless at the moment.

Can anyone help me how to speed up please.

Thanks in advance.

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Is this one or several large files, or are we talking about hundreds, if not thousands of files? – BloodPhilia May 20 '10 at 20:41
@BloodPhilia - even for very small files, that's pretty slow .. – ldigas May 20 '10 at 21:10
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Yes, but in combination with USB 1.1, too long/damaged cable, it might explain. I tried to move 10 MB once, it were about 40000 files... It took about 1,5 hours. When moving a 4 GB file, it didn't even take 5 minutes on the same disk. – BloodPhilia May 20 '10 at 21:16
Are you sending the files to the root on the external drive or into a subdiectory? – Blackbeagle May 20 '10 at 22:00
@BloodPhilia - okey, yes, maybe. 40000 files; nice :) (262 bytes per file; what did you do ?) – ldigas May 21 '10 at 2:35
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2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Perhaps your cable is to long or damaged in some form. It possible that the port you are using is a USB 1 or 1.1. Try also to update your drivers.

Try using the same cable on another external device like a phone and see if the problem persists. Could also be an issue with the device in which case you should contact WD.

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Yep, USB 2.0 is up to 400mbs (though no device has made it that high yet) and even USB 1.x should be doing 2mbs at the lowest. Try a USB device through that same port and if it is also slow then at least you know the external drive is not the problem. – Xeoncross May 20 '10 at 21:06
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If it won't void the warranty on the drive, pull it out of the enclosure and plug it into a SATA port on your motherboard. If there's no problems there and other devices work fine (USB Stick) on that USB port, then it's likely the USB cable for the drive or the board that converts from USB->SATA inside the enclosure.

(this assumes correct and updated drivers)

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Many of these new drives will break badly if you remove them from the enclosure. Not so much the drive, but the enclosure. THis might not be such a good idea if you plan of keeping it long term. – Tim Meers May 20 '10 at 21:17
@Tim Meers: Really? I don't deal with lots of them, but I've never heard of that. A 2 TB external drive is a plain 'ol SATA HDD in an externally powered enclosure. All of the ones I've seen are metal cases that screw into the drive. – SnOrfus May 20 '10 at 21:28
Yea the WD i have is in a plastic housing. Looks very brittle to me. I'm big on taking things apart, but I would not touch this thing unless I had to. – Tim Meers May 21 '10 at 12:32
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protected by ChrisF Feb 17 at 20:52

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