W7 slows to unusable crawl when moving/copying files

To start off, I absolutely love Windows 7 and this is the only problem I've had with it yet.

Any time I go to move or copy a large enough file, W7 slows down so much that it is unusable. The transfer rate starts off at about 40 MB/s, but eventually slows to about 9 MB/s. If I cancel the transfer, everything goes back to normal and W7 works flawlessly and very fast.

I already installed and tried TeraCopy (someone else had my same issue and installed it with successful results), but for me this did not change anything.

Can anyone please offer me some advice on how to fix this issue? The transfer rate/slowdown was bad enough on Vista, but this is just unmanageable. I really, really love Windows 7 and definitely do not want to switch back to Vista or even XP, so I'd love if someone can help me.

Thanks again, very much.

What are you transferring to? Could be a driver issue, or even an anti-virus issue...what anti-virus solution are you running?

logicearth said:

What are you transferring to? Could be a driver issue, or even an anti-virus issue...what anti-virus solution are you running?

Haven't installed an antivirus (will be re-installing ESET shortly), so that can't be the issue. I first tried transferring a large file from my secondary (D: ) drive to the main (C: ) drive, and when that caused the problem, I tried just moving one file from a specific folder in (C: ) to another folder in (C: ) and experienced the same issue. So the issue appears to be either with only (C: ) or with both (C: ) and (D: ).
————————————————

I guess I should mention this as well: when I was first installing Windows 7 (from USB stick) and the installation first prompted a restart, I left the USB stick in the drive and it booted from it, making the installation restart from the beginning. Since I didn't know whether this was a corrupted file error in relation to the installation file or just that I should have removed the USB stick before the boot, I let it start installing again from the beginning, but got nervous and just shut the PC down cold as it was installing.

So the next time I let it restart without the USB (I yanked it out), and it asked "Boot with Windows 7 or Windows Vista?"... I selected Windows 7 and it said "boot error, install not complete".

So now I reboot again from USB and go through the installation process from the beginning again. When the installation prompts the restart again, I yank the USB stick out before the system can get to the booting part. So now it boots from the hard drive and continues the installation normally.

So what I'm thinking is that there are actually 2 (two) Windows 7 installations on my PC (on the C: drive) right now... one is corrupt and one is the one I'm using now. Could this have something to do with why (C: ) may be experiencing difficulty?

Sorry for the long explanation, thanks for listening!

Nah that's not why. If your Windows is working well otherwise, there is some specific reason like your controller driver not doing so well or bios misconfiguration.

Why don't you run HDTune and post a screenshot of it when it has finished. Don't really know how this is going to help but it isn't going to hurt.

Believe it or not, copying files is more stressful on a system than people realize. I'm not saying this should happen as you describe at all, though. Moving files or folders within the same partition is not at all stressful and is quite easy for Windows to accomplish under normal circumstances. In this case, the actual file doesn't physically move anywhere on the actual disk itself.

Get 2.55 version - http://www.hdtune.com/

torrentg said:

Nah that's not why. If your Windows is working well otherwise, there is some specific reason like your controller driver not doing so well.

Why don't you run HDTune and post a screenshot of it when it has finished. Don't really know how this is going to help but it isn't going to hurt.

Believe it or not, copying files is more stressful on a system than people realize. I'm not saying this should happen as you describe at all, though.

Get 2.55 version - HD Tune

Here it is... hope someone can offer some help. Thanks in advance.

Alright. That's a 5400 rpm drive which is not geared towards high performance. Ouch on that 8.7 MB/sec minimum speed and 27.7 MB/sec average. CPU usage is low which is good. Burst rate, however, seems surprisingly good for a 5400. Access time, eh, not so good.

Unless there is something wrong with drivers which at this point I'm guessing not, there is only one thing you can do.

Get a hold of O&O Defrag and use it to defragment the drive. Alternatively, you may use Windows built in defrag. I'm willing to bet that the drive is very fragmented right now.

Let us know how things are after you've done this. If it is still quite bad, I and others will have ideas for you.

torrentg said:

Alright. That's a 5400 rpm drive which is not geared towards high performance. Ouch on that 8.7 MB/sec minimum speed and 27.7 MB/sec average. CPU usage is low which is good. Burst rate, however, seems surprisingly good for a 5400. Access time, eh, not so good.

Unless there is something wrong with drivers which at this point I'm guessing not, there is only one thing you can do.

Get a hold of O&O Defrag and use it to defragment the drive. Alternatively, you may use Windows built in defrag. I'm willing to bet that the drive is very fragmented right now.

Let us know how things are after you've done this. If it is still quite bad, I and others will have ideas for you.

I went ahead with the defragmentation through O&O. The drive was only about 3% defragmented, but I got it down to 0%. It did seem to alleviate some of the effect moving/copying had on system performance, but the speed of transfer remains low.

If anyone else has any other suggestions or tips to improve or help with this issue, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again to everyone who volunteered to assist me.

Cool. If you want to further optimize your file system, a great thing to do is an offline defragment. Offline means before Windows boots. O&O can do this if you create a job in it and use the scheduler function to work upon next reboot.

This is highly recommended and supported, not only to you but to everyone, by Microsoft themselves. That's because this allows for MFT defragmenting. That's the file that is responsible for indexing all the files on the HDD. So in essence, it is being used every time you or your system accesses a file.

There will be a significant perfomance gain from this. Other locked files will benefit too like the page file.

I am wondering what your specs are on the system in question.
Can you copy and paste your specs into here?
Motherboard, drives, etc....

Everyone is always defending Windows as the problem when it comes to slow operation. Windows is SLOW. That's because of the outdated registry operation, NTFS, and many other factors.

In Windows, regardless of fragmentation, RPM of drive, or whatever, I get around 90-100 MB/sec of copying from drive to drive, and that's with copying 100-500GBs of data at a time, so a TRUE test and one that can't be skewed by the caching Windows uses.

Now, on the SAME computer, with Linux and Ext4, I can SUSTAIN 130-140MB/sec on the EXACT drive(s). Why? Because Ext4 is an UP-TO-DATE filesystem designed for today's drives.

Both systems are much quicker on SSD's, although Windows still lags quite a bit on Boot Up for an SSD. That's because Windows loads thousands of small files. SSD's lack the read speed of RANDOM READ files, so that's why Windows boot up performance on an SSD is 10X better.

I'm not bashing Windows as a Linux user. I use BOTH. Facts are, Windows just uses old technology designed for older hardware. Drivers alone can't change that.

The OP original question asked about the SYSTEM slowing down. Not JUST the Copying of files. That, in itself, is why I replied here. Currently my system is crawling, even just for internet access in the browser while running a Parity operation (using DisParity for those familar). My System resrouces reports less the 3% usage (97% idle). My Browser and OS are on an SSD drive. I have an i7-950, stepped up one on overclock and 24GB's of RAM and Dual GTX SLI'd 260's. My system is NOT slow by ANY means. I deactivated Anti-Virus, and any other processes. This is a Technology issue with Windows. Not a driver issue.

So, when M$ gets themselves to a point of actually re-writing an OS from the ground up (and, yes, Windows 8 is still old tech), that's when you will see better Windows performance. Why don't they do that? Because people keep buying it no matter what. Why change something when people will continue to buy? Kudo's to M$ for that in a business sense. As for a performance and true upgrade to give people a better system, nothing good to say there.

I know this post will make some people upset because they like to defend Windows. Windows is what it is and CAN be much better. Because of 3rd party support, Windows will remain the King-of-the-Hill OS. M$ improved many areas with Windows 7 from Vista for two reasons. No one wanted Vista and it's problems. XP still did everything necessary (and still does). Linux was gaining market share and was/IS a much better performing OS. They (M$), knows that. They admitted many times, indirectly, that they have work to do with Windows 7, naming the Boot times especially. Yes, as long as you DON'T install ANY additional software, Windows 7 boots quite fast, even on a slow Hard Drive.

The day the Adobe and a few other 3rd party Software Companies decide to develop commercial software for Linux will be the day when Linux takes over M$. Why won't that happen? Tooooo much choice. Choice is good, but too much of a good thing is NOT good. Too many distro's of Linux create headaches for commercial developers. Which Distro do they support? It changes to fast and things break. I love Linux, but not going anywhere unless a overall standard comes into play. Windows just needs to IMPROVE. From the Ground Up!

My two cents. Love it, Hate it. Don't care. Just had to get that off my chest. Don't defend M$ just because you like it. State the facts, not your opinions. I've given pros/cons to both sides. Love them both, have things I dislike in Both (Comparing Linux to Windows).

_Cybie