I recently got a new laptop and transferred about four thousand photos from my phone to it. Now I'm trying to move one to five photos at a time from my laptop to a new USB drive I just bought, but it's taking forever. It's been three hours and I've only managed to transfer 13 photos! I've even switched USB ports since my laptop has two, but the speed hasn't improved. What could be causing this slow transfer?
4 Answers
First off, check if your USB drive is USB 2.0 or 3.0. That can make a huge difference in speed. You might also want to run a speed test on the drive to see its actual transfer speeds. Don't forget that if your laptop's USB ports are also 2.0, that’ll slow things down too! Plus, a slow CPU could also be a bottleneck, even with decent USB ports. Good luck!
You could measure the speed with a tool like Crystal Disk Mark. Same question as before, are both your drives and ports USB 2 or 3? If those photos are important to you, make sure you have them backed up somewhere just in case.
If the USB drive is black, it's likely USB 1.0, red is 2.0, and blue is 3.0. Make sure you know what you have, as that affects transfer speeds a lot.
What phone are you using? If it’s an older model that only supports USB 2.0, that could be limiting your speeds. If this thumb drive isn't cutting it, consider getting a proper external hard drive. A USB 3.0 drive connected to your router could set you up with NAS storage for faster photo uploads wirelessly.
But wait, he’s moving files from a laptop to a USB drive, so the phone isn’t in the mix here.