Copying files to an external hard drive

Why is it that whenever I try to move files from my computer to an external hard drive—and honestly, it’s the exact same headache with a standard thumb drive—the speeds are all over the place? Sometimes it feels like it's flying at full throttle, but other times, it crawls along at a pathetic 1 KB/s, even though I haven't even moved the drive to a different USB port!
For instance, if I'm just transferring a movie file around 800 MB, one minute it takes maybe two or three minutes, and the next? It's dragging on for fifteen minutes or more!

It’s totally possible some other junk was hogging the hard drive at that exact second, you know? Like maybe an antivirus scan kicked off out of nowhere... or some torrent was running in the background... 🤷

analogwalker2 said:Why is it that when I move files from my PC to an external hard drive—or even just a thumb drive—the speed is all over the place? Sometimes it hits full speed, and other times it drops to a crawl, like 1 KB/s, even though I'm using the exact same USB port.
For example, moving an 800 MB movie might take me three minutes one time and fifteen minutes the next.

Maybe the file sizes aren't actually the same?

Lawrence Barnes64 said:It’s entirely plausible—and quite likely, actually!—that something else was hitting that hard drive at that exact moment... perhaps an antivirus scan was running in the background? Or maybe a torrent client was active and hogging resources? 🤷

No, absolutely nothing is running! Honestly, I delete my torrents from uTorrent the very second a download finishes—so there's no way that's it.
I've even tried a full reboot, but no luck there either—still stuck!