Hi, I seem to have very slow speeds when copying from and to my western digital 2.5 external hard drive. PC I am working on has 4GB ram and dual core but the speeds are so slow. W7 gives me notices to increase USB port speed but I don't understand how to implement it's instructions Any help would be appreciative
Maybe the PC has an older USB implementation (1.1?) that does not allow the Western Digital drive to support the slower speed (USB 2/3 only?)
It is fairly new computer, came with 8.1 and the external drive is compatible with either 2/3 USB It's just a#s slow, seems to be random whether copying is slow or fast. Like under a Mb/s sometimes and highest 14mb/s so yea pretty f@@$n slow My question is though targeted on when I receive the windows message that another USB port could be much faster, etc... I'm sure many here have received that message when they plug in an external drive!? Thanks
Speed will differs depend on kind and size of files! as smaller the file, as slower the speed! Also, check the cable use for connection, there quite huge differences! Check in BIOS of your machine that high speed for USB is selected! You didn't mention your machine has real USB 3, compatibility says just that you could use USB 3, even if the Chip on MB is just USB 2!! Maybe you try to get a 'extra' USB 3.0/3.1 PCI-E card!
It sounds like you've got your usb plugged into a usb 2 port. In general, usb 3 ports are blue. Windows 7 requires usb 3 drivers. Are you sure you have them installed?
turn off your protection suite if any & see if the transfer speed increases...especially if you got microsoft security essentials / windows defender working.
Not always sure about that blue color!! A friend, who bought his Acer Laptop in Australia, had all USB Ports in Black color while one of them is USB 3. and should be blue!! For to be sure, special if it's a Laptop, take a look at the Laptops Manual and check the availability!!
does not look like a software glitch...seems like a hardware issue to me...try another usb cable / try another usb port on the machine. try another portable hard disk & see if the transfer rate stays as slow as before...if not you need to get a replacement from western digital.
It simply could also be a problem with that USB Chip('s) on MB! It really looks like an hardware issue!!
What else is connected to usb? Card reader/ bluetooth/ diag kit/ usb lcd/ etc. Are all the usb ports looking good? Non broken/shorting? Have you looked at the system logs through event viewer? Do you have the latest drivers & bios installed?
I installed W10 (free) and now the one USB slot that wasn't able to do data transfer, just charging, is copying at acceptable rates 40Mb/s. I will try the other two USB slots (that did transfer data) regarding copying and report my findings Thanks
So the other two ports are near eachother opposite to the one I tested. These two are very slow but work so I think the one that on W7 did not do data transfer is actually the fast one but for some reason on W7 it only charged stuff not copy. Now it works great. Thanks for everyone's help