slow defrag on external drive

thomaseg1 · Feb 24, 2022

External 3.0 usb wd 1230 4 T
defrag took 4 hours
scan took 1 hour and surface scan took 4 showed no errors on either.
file transfer rate at 130 (normal)
tried to defrag a 2nd time and still around 4 hours.
all other usb drives took about 10 minutes.

any ideas?

TheMystic · Feb 24, 2022

thomaseg1 said:
External 3.0 usb wd 1230 4 gig
defrag took 4 hours
scan took 1 hour and surface scan took 4 showed no errors on either.
file transfer rate at 130 (normal)
tried to defrag a 2nd time and still around 4 hours.
all other usb drives took about 10 minutes.

any ideas?

4 GB is quite a big size. I am assuming you used the same utility to defrag both times. That's because different utilities use different methods/ logic to defrag. I have seen that if I defrag a disk using Windows Disk Defrag, and then repeat it a second time, the process is very fast. But if I use a 3rd party utility to defrag this (already defragged) disk, and then attempt to defrag again with Windows Disk Defrag, the process takes more time.

That said, there are several possibilities in your case, including a failing disk. Try copying over all files to another disk, format it, and copy the files back. See if defrag process speeds up.