I've just set up my new WD My Book Essential 8TB hard drive on my Windows 10 PC, and I'm experiencing incredibly slow write speeds. My primary goal is to back up larger files (between 5 to 15GB) to free up space on my internal drives. Previously, I've only used storage devices up to 2TB, so I'm not sure if there are specific settings I need to adjust for larger drives. When I started transferring files, the write speed was around 2MB/s, which feels ridiculously slow. The read speed is impressive at 200MB/s, and sometimes I manage to transfer a few files quickly, but the majority of the time, writing is painfully slow. I've attempted disabling virus protection, optimizing the drive's settings to 'better performance' in Device Manager, and even switching USB ports, although the read speed is good. The drive shows no issues and has zero working hours logged (model: WD80EDAZ-11CEWB0). What could be causing this problem and what should I do to improve the write speed? Thank you for any guidance!
1 Answer
Sometimes, larger drives inherently have slower write speeds. For example, I own a 320GB drive at 5200RPM that writes around 150MB/s, while a 1TB drive with the same cache only manages about 75MB/s. It's just how some larger drives perform, but your issue seems extreme.
But we're talking 2MB/s here, which is about as fast as some really old drives! Imagine waiting forever to transfer 8TB; that would take ages!