Transfering data between 2 internal hdds is slow

[Asnor]

Hello dear community,

 

recently I decided to upgrade my system with an SSD and an extra HDD and I'm preparing to setup the SSD as my OS drive.

So the first thing I wanted to do was back up my music and some games from my current HDD which runs my OS to my new HDD.

While it transferred my music quite fast (15 GB) to the new HDD it is really slow when I try to transfer Starcraft II (14.1 GB) to it. (about 4 mb/s)

It had no problems backing up my other games on it even though they were bigger.

 

Some info:

Using Windows 7

HDD with OS -1000GB Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 HDS721010DLE630 32MB 3.5" (8.9cm) SATA 6Gb/s

new HDD - Western Digital WD10EZEX Blue 1TB

Both connected via Sata cables, using Sata II for the WD Blue and Sata I for the Hitachi

Didn't defragment my HDD once. EDIT: Scheduled defragmentation is on.

Not sure if relevant, but Starcraft II is installed on Program files (x86) and the music/other games were on the desktop.

Don't know what else might be relevant, will add the requested information from you guys to this.

 

Hope someone can help me.

Thanks

 

PS: The WD drive is an advanced format drive, do I need to install the alignment software to properly use it even though I don't plan to use it as my OS drive?

[kfarris]

Okay I would recommend you defrag both HDD's (NOTE NEVER DEFRAG A SSD IT WILL KILL IT OPTIMIZE ONLY!) using this software http://filehippo.com/download_defraggler/

It will replace the default windows crap this software works much better and does an overall better job in my opinion. It's what all the IT PRO's use here in Washington to speed up Hard drive performance and maintain it.

 

I would also recommend that you partition your 1TB drive to 2 500gig partitions so that it performs better but it's optional.

 

I would also recommend you reformat it to where its not in advanced format as it only benefits small transfers where as doing large game file transfers will be greatly reduced in performance in that mode. And that's mainly why your game files are taking long times to transfer. Your music files are small so that's why they transfer quickly even when combined they total to 15gig. However a game file its self is usually quite large compared to a single music file. 

 

Hopefully I explained it clearly enough for you. If you don't really do large file transfers then you can stay in advanced format but it only benefits small file transfers. Now if this was on a SSD to SSD it really wouldn't matter but it's not so hence the detailed explanation..

[Asnor]

Hello kfarris, 

 

I'll get to it once I return home, thank you for taking your time to help me.

[Asnor]

Okay I would recommend you defrag both HDD's (NOTE NEVER DEFRAG A SSD IT WILL KILL IT OPTIMIZE ONLY!) using this software http://filehippo.com/download_defraggler/

It will replace the default windows crap this software works much better and does an overall better job in my opinion. It's what all the IT PRO's use here in Washington to speed up Hard drive performance and maintain it.

I would also recommend that you partition your 1TB drive to 2 500gig partitions so that it performs better but it's optional.

I would also recommend you reformat it to where its not in advanced format as it only benefits small transfers where as doing large game file transfers will be greatly reduced in performance in that mode. And that's mainly why your game files are taking long times to transfer. Your music files are small so that's why they transfer quickly even when combined they total to 15gig. However a game file its self is usually quite large compared to a single music file.

Hopefully I explained it clearly enough for you. If you don't really do large file transfers then you can stay in advanced format but it only benefits small file transfers. Now if this was on a SSD to SSD it really wouldn't matter but it's not so hence the detailed explanation..

Im defragmenting my main drive now and the estimated time is around 24 hrs with 70 gb of fragmented data and 411 gb of the 1tb being occupied. I already defragmented my secondary drive the, WD and it took 1 hr with 15 gb of the data being fragmented and 132 gb of the 1 tb being occupied.

Are these times normal or is it supposed to be faster? I fear that my main drive might die out soon given that the long generic test in seatools took 14 hrs to reach the 60% mark, so I canceled it.

Ty

[TomvanWijnen]

Are these times normal or is it supposed to be faster?

No, those things can take ages. It's fine.

[kfarris]

No, those things can take ages. It's fine.

What he said is true and defraggler will tell you the drives health status if it says good then your hard drives are fine. Defragging large drives that have a lot of data on them can take a day or 3. Espically if you have say a 1TB drive with 50% - 80% used.. 

[Asnor]

OK, thanks. 

 

I thought that I should update my situation for anyone having the same symptoms or issue: Defragmentation process was at 60 % after 36 hrs and then I got a system message telling me that my HDD is about to die and moving files from that HDD to the second became even slower, less than 1 Mb/s.

Defraggler told me that my HDD was OK (I think it uses the SMART feature from the HDDs?), so I recommend double checking the HDD with a test tool.

 

Again, thanks guys for taking your time to help me.