Very SLOW External drive 41.5 MB/s Read and 38.7 write
What is going WRONG
How do I fix it or is it BROKEN
Regards Coll
I recommend downloading CrystalDiskInfo for testing; it can read the hard drive’s internal S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data, allowing you to quickly check the drive’s health status.
Upon opening the software, a prominent health rating is displayed on the left: “Good,” “Caution” (indicating the hard drive has started to show physical damage), or “Bad” (indicating the hard drive is severely damaged).
Additionally, to prevent data corruption when a drive is unplugged, Windows disables “write caching” for external hard drives by default, which results in slower speeds. You can change this setting as follows:
1. Right-click the “Start” menu on your PC and open ‘Device Manager’.
2. Expand ‘Disk drives’, locate your external hard drive, right-click it, and select ‘Properties’.
3. Switch to the ‘Policies’ tab, change the setting from “Quick removal” to ‘Better performance’, and check the box for ‘Enable write caching on the device’. (Note: Once this feature is enabled, you must click “Safely Remove” in the bottom-right corner before unplugging the drive.)
To get a more accurate understanding of your disk performance, you can use disk management software to quickly measure and verify the read-write speeds of your hard drive or partition. This includes testing sequential read/write and random read/write modes. (This blog should be helpful for you: How to Check Hard Drive Health on Windows 10/11 )
