Solved Copying speed suddenly dropped by 90%. What??

Until just now, both my office PCs have performed up to spec. Good, solid computers for what I do.

Today, System 2 suffered a drop in copying speed from my internal NVMe to my external SSD, compared to its "always" behavior. It always (like System 1) copied fairly large files at 350+ MB/s from my internal to my external, but today, it started copying at only 35+ MB/s.

(I think I recall that I complained here a while back that Sys 2 was happily copying at 350+ and suddenly dropped to 35+ toward the end of a large-file copy process. I think I got acceptable explanations for that back then. But today, it started at 35+ and stayed there for a ten-minute copy of a 17 GB file.)

I removed the external and checked its connections. Changed SSD disks in the external. Tried several USB3 ports on System 2.

Checked the performance of System 1 from internal to external for a particular file. 350+ MB/s. Copied (wi-fi) that file from Sys 1 to Sys 2 and tried copying it to external. 35+ MB/s. Brought the external from Sys 1 (I keep them paired to their PCs, to avoid any possible file confusion) over to Sys 2 and tried that file. Sys 2 copied that file to external 1 at 35+.

Copied (wi-fi) one of the slow-copying files from Sys 2 to Sys 1. Tried copying from internal to external 1 and external 2. 350+ MB/s.

The overall performance of Sys 2 doesn't seem to be different from that of System 1 in any noticeable way, but this sudden copying failure is something I don't know how to attack.

I'm confident that I'll "get by with a little help from my friends." Wi-fi copying speeds and internal disk-to-disk copying speeds are lightning for both PCs for these files, so it must be something to do with the System 2 USB3 ports, I think.

What say you?

Have you tried the sfc/ scannow and dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth commands?

Not yet. Will do, tomorrow morning. Late here now. Gotta get some rest. I was thinking about opening the case to see whether there are any physical connection issues, but tomorrow, I’ll start with the sfc-dism runs. Hate doing that, cuz it screws up some of my careful customizations. Oh, well. That’s life, with Windows. Thanks.

hdmi said:

Have you tried the sfc/ scannow and dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth commands?

Click to expand...

When I have to do that, I also uninstall and reinstall the LCU.

It seems file copy is currently broken at kernel level MS are supposedly On-The-Case

@Rollback_Jockey

But it only happens on this machine. The other is fine. Can you give me a link for that information about file copy?

@RJARRRPCGP

I have nothing listed in uninstallable updates. Besides, these two machines are basically identical in every respect except hardware specifics, so I don't think the last LCU could be involved.

@hdmi

Ran sfc, and it reported it had found things and fixed them. In the past, this has always meant it found my manually edited Win+X menu files and put back the default monster menu. Dang! Then I rebooted and ran dism .., componentstore, and rebooted. Then I ran dism ... restorehealth and rebooted. Then I ran sfc again, and it found nothing.

Then I tried copying a small file and a large file from my internal NVMe to my external (USB-connected) SSD, and it worked at only 30+ MB/s. Projected time 10 minutes for an 18 GB file. Ridiculous. And this machine has "always" copied to external just as fast as the other: 350+ MB/s. The external can't be the problem, because I switched externals (and the disks in them) and the problem persisted. But only on this machine.

Two things I forgot to mention in the OP: When I plug in a USB device, it now takes this machine about three seconds to sound the notice that there's a device connected. Second, shortly after I got this machine, the front USB ports went dead on me, and the only fix was to open the case, remove the ports, check the connections (OK), reinstall the ports, and close the case. All fine. The vendor was all set to send me a replacement machine, but after I fiddled with it, it was working perfectly, so I turned down the offer. Maybe that was a blunder. I dunno.

I'm opening the box later today, to repeat whatever I can remember about what I did before. We'll see. I did move this box, and do a bunch of internal stuff in it after I got my new machine (just before Xmas). I replaced the two NVMe disks in this one with the ones from my previous System 2, and I installed an internal wi-fi card from the previous System 2, because that card worked perfectly on the old Sys 2, and the new Sys 2 (formerly Sys 1) had always been on an ethernet cable to the router. Both of those transplants (all three of them, actually) have worked perfectly. But yesterday's copying operation was the first one I've tried since the transplant operations, and I thus MAY HAVE knocked something in the box while I was operating on it. Doesn't seem likely, though. You'd think USB ports would either work or not work, not just work poorly.

Thank you all for the attempts to help me out. I'm still hoping to find a way through this malfunction. If I find anything inside (or outside) the box, I'll report here.

Suggestions still very welcome. I'm outta my depth here.

Wisewiz said:

@RJARRRPCGP

I have nothing listed in uninstallable updates. Besides, these two machines are basically identical in every respect except hardware specifics, so I don't think the last LCU could be involved.

Click to expand...

Seems that's the only way to guarantee that the LCU doesn't get butchered.

@RJARRRPCGP

Well, that certainly sounds like the old "MS mindset." It was, after all, a Security update, or so it says here.

Have you tried copying a few GB worth of files to the external drive by using a reliable copy tool like FastCopy? What does CrystalDiskMark say when you run the benchmark test on the external drive?

hdmi said:

Have you tried copying a few GB worth of files to the external drive by using a reliable copy tool like FastCopy? What does CrystalDiskMark say when you run the benchmark test on the external drive?

Click to expand...

Thanks for your feedback, but since I switched the two externals, switched the disks in them, and switched the USB cables, the externals are clearly not where the problem lies. It’s definitely either hardware or software in the System 2 box. I’m hoping that Patch Tuesday will help, but if not, I’ll resort to an in-place, following @Brink’s guide. If that doesn’t do it, I’ll have to turn to the hardware. I think I’ll open the box this weekend.

@hdmi

Going to give FastCopy a try today. Thanks for the suggestion. Found the portable at PAPPS.com, so I won’t have to worry about uninstalling it if it doesn’t help. Report later.

Great idea; unimpressive result. In fact, I've tried a handful of quick-copier apps, and I've found none of them any faster than my native W11 copy function. It copies multi-MB files from one drive to the other so fast that the progress window never has the chance to open. Anyway, I'll keep investigating and hoping for a solution.

Hi,
Saw the same thing external hdd wise
Not sure ms likes external devices anymore lol

Could be the external devise is cluttered so badly it's writing/ reading all over or just about to fail worst case.

But at least dying would save time diagnosing hehe

Thanks, but both my externals take 350+ MB/s copies --- on System 1. System 2 is bunged somehow, and the problem seems to be in the USB 3.0 ports only. I'm going to open 'er up and see whether something is amiss inside. But many things on the agenda today, and fixing slow copying speeds isn't high on it, especially since two perfectly healthy drives in each PC have all I need on them. I use my externals almost exclusively for storing copies of MR images and copies of folder backups, both of them copied from my internal "Local Storage" disks.

Everything else on System 2 seems fine. No probs.

Well, I'll be gobsmacked! Opened 'er up and checked and reseated all connectors. Removed and replaced the anchoring bracket for the I/O ports on the front (including the 2 USB 3.0 that I use to communicate with the USB 3.0 External enclosures), and when I closed up and reconnected the speakers, monitor, keyboard, and power, and booted and ran a copying test with a ~17GB file from internal NVMe to external SSD, look at what happened:



Now, wouldn't THAT just frost yer knickers? Don't know what that burst effect was at the very beginning of the process, and I wish I could sustain it, but I'm happy as a pig in that my copying speed is at least back up to the norm for this System.

Wisewiz said:

@hdmi

Going to give FastCopy a try today. Thanks for the suggestion. Found the portable at PAPPS.com, so I won’t have to worry about uninstalling it if it doesn’t help. Report later.

Click to expand...

FastCopy is portable in the particular sense that when you run the installer you can click on the Extract only button which causes the installer to behave just like a self-extracting archive. So no need to go on the portableapps.com website, but anyway...

Wisewiz said:

It copies multi-MB files from one drive to the other so fast that the progress window never has the chance to open.

Click to expand...

That's why I said copy a few GB worth of files, not MB. The idea I had in mind was to just check whether the problem was going to occur solely when copying with File Explorer because, had that been your case, the culprit most likely would have been something got broken inside Windows as opposed to being a hardware issue.

I suppose it’s possible that something WAS broken in Windows, and maybe all the sfc-ing and dism-ing I did set it right, but it took several re-starts to finish the job. Possible; maybe probable.

In any case, it was working the way it should work the last few times I ran a multi-GB copy operation. Thanks again for your help and ideas.

Hi,
Yeah sometimes I notice just permissions can be an issue sharing drives with other computers.

hdmi said:

FastCopy is portable in the particular sense that when you run the installer you can click on the Extract only button which causes the installer to behave just like a self-extracting archive. So no need to go on the portableapps.com website, but anyway...

Click to expand...

@hdmi

Thank you for that. I had no idea it could behave that way. I've now got it on both desktops, and have tested it multiple times with 17+ GB files from NVMe to NVMe, and it speeds the operations up remarkably. And I'm using the extracted version; not the PortableApps.com version.

hdmi said:

That's why I said copy a few GB worth of files, not MB. The idea I had in mind was to just check whether the problem was going to occur solely when copying with File Explorer because, had that been your case, the culprit most likely would have been something got broken inside Windows as opposed to being a hardware issue.

Click to expand...

My reply #17 above doesn't take into account the new addition of FastCopy to my arsenal of utilities. Thank you for both the information about the program, and for suggesting it in the first place. It's a gem, after all.

Wisewiz said:

Well, I'll be gobsmacked! Opened 'er up and checked and reseated all connectors. Removed and replaced the anchoring bracket for the I/O ports on the front (including the 2 USB 3.0 that I use to communicate with the USB 3.0 External enclosures), and when I closed up and reconnected the speakers, monitor, keyboard, and power, and booted and ran a copying test with a ~17GB file from internal NVMe to external SSD, look at what happened:

View attachment 83215

Now, wouldn't THAT just frost yer knickers? Don't know what that burst effect was at the very beginning of the process, and I wish I could sustain it, but I'm happy as a pig in that my copying speed is at least back up to the norm for this System.

Click to expand...

This is more than likely a result of the onboard DRAM cache of the SSD. Once it fills up it slows down the transfer speeds