Vipul Jain asks:
I have a ASUS K53SM-SX010D, which is a mid-range laptop with a Core i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 2GB NVIDIA GT630M and 750GB 5400rpm SATA HDD running on Windows 7 64Bit. The laptop is a performer.
Whenever I copy stuff like 3-4 movies together from an external HDD to the PC or vice versa, I can barely perform background tasks. Sometimes even music playing in Foobar starts skipping.
Can anyone suggest some ideas that I can try to avoid these temporary hangs? Or is this behavior normal? Thanks.
Browser: Firefox 13
System: Windows
Tagged: asus, copy files, notebook, slow performance, transfer data
System: Windows
Tagged: asus, copy files, notebook, slow performance, transfer data
11 Answers -
ferdinan Sitohang
July 17, 2012please see this:
1. is your HDD external USB 2.0 or USB 3.0
2. If it is USB2.0, then it is a normal behavior, since movies has big size.
3. If it is USB 3.0. You need to plug the external HDD into the 3.0 version, it colors is blue (CMIIW).
4. USB 3.0 is faster then 2.0, and may be you will not face the problem again.
I’m sure that i saw a blue part in the HDD’s output, so yes its 3.0
July 17, 2012And i had plugged it in my 3.0 port only.
can you give a brief of the movie size that you try to transfer from your External HD? Actually, when it comes to the real transfer data, you will not get the maximum transfer rate as mention in your HD specification but less than that. What you get for a sustain read and transfer speed depends on the Drive and what features it’s support, even if you use the same USB 3.0 both HD and computer, it will synchronize at what level of read and transfer rate/speed they will communicate.
July 18, 2012And i first copied 10gigs and then a full 150gig transfer. rate was 12-14mb constant.
July 18, 2012Then from what i see that it is normal.
July 19, 2012illegal3alien
July 17, 2012You could be running out of RAM causing the computer to begin paging. Basically since the RAM is gone, it is trying to use the hard drive instead. This creates a lot of strain on the hard drive and everything slows down. When you copy files, it uses the hard drive for that instead of paging. The best way to find out for sure is Resource Monitor. Open up Task Manager (either CTRL-SHIFT-ESC or right click on the taskbar and select it). Go the the Performance tab and select Resource Monitor
Look at:
CPU: Utilization %
Hard Drive: Disk I/O
Ram: Hard Faults
These should all appear on the main page of Resource Monitor. My guess is Hard Faults are jumping up to 200-500 when the slow downs occur. This means that the computer is running out of RAM. You can either upgrade or try closing applications when making large file transfers. You can also check the “Available” section of Physical Memory of the Task Manager Performance tab. If available becomes around 100-200, then RAM is definitely a problem.
The RAM barely goes above 2.5GB usage. At that time as well it was just 1.71GB. And i have a 4gig installed.
July 17, 2012So i’m pretty sure RAM might not be the problem :/
Ankit Gajurel
July 17, 2012Assuming your laptop is a new one (4 -6 months old), your problems can be any of the below:
1. A virus or any malicious program infection
2. Your external HDD having a very low buffer memory, probably 0- 2 MB.
3. Your external HDD sporting a USB 1.0 version connector
Foobar might have its own problems; totally unrelated to your slow transfers. If all those happen altogether then you certainly have a virus or similar infection.
BTW, how many background processes are running? Can you be specific on how many processes are running and how much CPU and RAM are they using?
New laptops have bloatware that will unexpectedly slow down your PC. Mine had 118 processes hogging up 38 % CPU and 2.8 GB RAM all the time. Make sure you don’t have such.
And the answer to your last question is ; NO, It is not normal. Maybe 10 years ago it was normal.
I bought a DOS based laptop (Just 1 month old). Installed the Win 7 myself and then drivers. Also i use CCleaner to manage my startup and quite often i open processes and close useless ones.
July 17, 2012Also i keep my PC quite protected and always scan anything before use.
I cannot say for the external, but it was not some local, it was WD 1TB with USB 3.0
And as i said at that only copying and foobar were in process.
Dalsan
July 17, 2012Not only is memory being used up, but if you open task manager and watch the processes in while copying the movies, you will see the processor jump in usage which also will slow your computer. If you want to lessen the load on your processor and memory some, you can use some of the tips here: http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/how-can-i-speed-up-my-old-desktop/
These are tips for any computer to get the most out of your computer, no matter the age or speed of the computer.
processor usage was 3%
July 17, 2012Also with an i5 should i be bothered, i really thought i5 was a peace of mind tech.
Sorry, I meant to say check the processes while transferring and using other software. Given that there is 3% usage, there shouldn’t be as big a jump to be that laggy.
Although your processor is powerful, Windows is not optimized enough to see its potential. With 4GB of memory, and the virtual memory may be used, disabling unnecessary services and features can get you from slight stutters to buttery smooth. I tweak any system I get a hold of to make sure that the system works to its potential, the way Windows should be from the get go.
July 17, 2012i dont think softwares like tune up etc actually speed up anything?
July 18, 2012do they, and should i use them?
At best, it will keep your system running in almost new condition with less reason for skew downs. It might not be much of a deal now, but as your computer ages and software becomes more demanding, it can mean further use out of your computer before needing to replace the computer. I notice slight performance boost in newer systems, but bigger gains in older, slower systems. It’s just a matter of time before systems slow down without regular cleaning, and why use resources on services and programs you are not even using. Even newer systems benefit from doing this if you plan to use very demanding software, like Photoshop or video editing, or even gaming. If you don’t plan on these, then it isn’t necessary and is purely your choice. I just recommend it since you paid for the performance, why not get as much of the performance as possible?
July 20, 2012Mike
July 17, 2012If you are (effectively) using a USB 3.0 hard drive on a USB 3.0 port or an eSATA hard drive you almost max out the performance of the internal 5400RPM hard drive. This would definitely result in the issues you encounter.
For an external drive connected via USB 2.0 this is still possible but unlikely.
It would be interesting to know whether you copy the 3-4 files simultaneous (all in their own copy process/window) or whether you select all 3-4 of them and copy them in a single process. In the first case this would certainly cause slow downs and hangs since they are effectively fighting over the bandwidth causing even more strain on your system and CPU.
yes it was 3.0 to 3.0
July 17, 2012And i first copied 10gigsand then a full 150gig transfer.
During both the transfers, system was equally laggy
Alan Wade
July 17, 2012The reason is depending on the two hard drive read/write rates you are going to be down to about 20Mbps. Fragmentation can play a part in this, if your hard drives are hevily fragmented then that will slow things down. I dont defrag my hard drives as I believe it stresses them too much, it is a personal choice so if you are happy to defrag your hard drives you should see faster speeds.
Another way to do this is to use something like Teracopy which is a free app to copy/paste files etc, that should speed things up. Available here:
http://codesector.com/teracopy
The last suggestion I have is that you can use robocopy which is a shell command built into Windows. You can access this through a Command Prompt window but rather than lean the shell commands download and use this Robocopy GUI from here:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/RoboCopy-GUI.shtml
This will make using the shell command much easier.
will try teracopy. and yes will defrag as well. I was getting transfer speeds starting from 70MBps to 20-22 in 20 seconds to a constant 12-14MBps for the rest of the transfer.
July 17, 2012So is this entirely my 5400RPM drive’s fault?
July 17, 2012Can i get a 7200 fixed in? or maybe an SSD?
You get 7200 rpm HDD as SSD will not satisfy your storage needs.
July 21, 2012Did you format the partition in which you were copying movies via quick format? If yes,then this might be the reason for slow data transfer rates.Try migrating the data of that partition to another place and format it normally to get good transfer speeds.
July 21, 2012I had formatted all drives properly as i bought a DOS based lappy. So before installing windows 7 i partitioned the drive into 4 parts and formatted all of them.
July 23, 2012Gian Singh
July 17, 2012See if there are a lot of processes or services that arent neccissary running at the same time. e.g. programs you dont need to keep open, torrent downloads, programs the manufacturers put on there
Ceely Weely
July 18, 2012You should install Teracopy its the best app for copying multiple files all over your computer.
Their is a free version..
You should have no problems now.
cheers
Matt Charman
July 23, 2012This is absolutely NOT normal behaviour for ANY computer. It is unfortunately common, but certainly not something you should live with. I copy similar size files to memory sticks and HD all the time on a Windows 7 64bit system that has a far older and slower processor. The computer slows down a bit, but not to the extent you describe, and I can certainly carry on working in Photoshop etc. without any issues during a massive file copy. In fact, I can even do video editing happily on an external HD.
One possible suspect is you have Norton 360 or similar installed. I always found this crippled my system during any intensive file copy operation, and is why I no longer use it. I use Eset Smart Security instead, which is just as good at catching nasties, but far less demanding on your system. Try disabling your anti-virus software and see if this makes a difference – if it does, you have the culprit and can address the problem.
It would also be sensible to check Device Manager and ensure you have the correct drivers installed for the system, in particular the USB and motherboard chipset drivers, and that they are up to date. An issue with a driver would almost certainly cause the issues you’re describing.
Also check that the issue isn’t related to your internal hard drive. If you copy the file from one folder to another on your drive, does the computer also slow down then? If it does, then the issue is not the USB.
If you can, try the USB drive on another computer. It’s possible you have a faulty drive. If your drive has errors, it may be struggling to write the data, and that can cause the system to slow down or even hang for brief periods.
I hope this helps.
I also use Eset, lo on resources good on security.
July 23, 2012Internal copying is fast, and has been even faster since i defragmented.
i guess it was the External HDD’s fault.
Since it was a friends i’ll review these comments again when i buy my own..
Jay
July 23, 2012I find it interesting seeing everyone ask about usb 2 and 3 and fragmentation etc… With most people having stock systems when they copy thing they are using windows explorer to copy/move data. It doesn’t matter ow big the files are etc as most computer made in the last few years have ample resources. The problem is how windows copies/moves files. If you drag a file, then drag another and another, you will not that there will be three instances of the copy command all working at the same time. Hard drives store data on platters with and arm that floats over the platter reading the magnetic encoding in each sector. So it is quite a mechanical activity. Now when you add more tasks simultaneously, that arm has to jump around to different parts of the source drive grabbing data all over the place thus increasing the stress and resources need to read the data. Then you have the same activity occurring writing to the target drive. That is why you get system resources chewed up and other issues. Programs like teracopy and fastcopy do intelligent managed copying. As you ad each copying task the programs que them up so that you are only doing a single read/write process on each drive and thus the resources needed to manage the process are reduced and you can use the computer without the impact on system resources caused by using windows default copying/moving processes.
What you say about the drives is true enough, that explains why copying multiple files simultaneously would take much longer than one large file copy, but that does not account for why the system itself was slowing down. Even an extremely old Pentium 4 can handle multiple file copies between USB drives and have enough performance left for playing DivX video, so a modern system should be able to do that with extreme ease. Changing the software you’re using to perform the copying will help maximise the way the data is copied, but wouldn’t address the issue of system slowdown, which would be just as likely to happen with any software, until the root cause is addressed.
July 23, 2012Emmanuel
July 23, 2012from my computer science background in memory management and computer architecture i can tell you that your processor is processing so much data that your cpu works harder to transfer that much data at once. your cpu operates at a higher frequency and can make other processing lag.
Unfortunately you’ve simply got that wrong. I don’t need to call on my 14 years experiencing in repairing computers to know that during a file copy operation, the processor actually deals with a relatively small amount of data – you’re not transcoding it, just moving it from one storage device to another, which will be done in managed blocks regardless of how much data in total is to be transferred. In a multi-tasking environment such as Windows, the amount of lag you notice should be very very minimal, even when transferring many Gb of data (which I do at least 5 times a week).
July 23, 2012Humm. It seems you don’t understand rsic microprocessor architecture. I have repair computers for 12 years also but I know far beyond just that. It takes hardcore Computer Science knowledge to understand memory management, digital logic, gates, flip flops, data line, address line, complex instruction set computing etc and the Architecture of CPU’s.
I have a very strong theoretical background of how computer hardware works all the way down to Oxide layer and MOSFET level.
You have to understand how data and instructions is fetched through the bus interface unit from the RAM, to L1 instruction cache and the L2 data cache, to branch target buffer, to the fetch decode unit, to the arithmetic logic unit, to the floating point math unit to the internal L2 cache back to the North bridge control unit to the RAM.
Also Hard Disks can get very fragmented and make things slow when all the electrons on the platters are scattered and makes the read and write arm search for the data and causes slow performance running multi-threading software and the operating system its self.
Which big O notations of an algorithm whose performance is directly proportional to the square of the size of the input data set?
July 24, 2012Very impressive background knowledge but very flawed understanding of the problem here. Modern CPUs are capable of many billions of instructions and data i/o’s per second. Yet Windows will grind to a halt when trying to read a defective cd. This seems to me bad cpu management on behalf of windows and has been something that’s irked and bewildered me since I started using windows in the 90′s. Why should trying to read a few MBs from optical or magnetic media occupy such an absurd amount of cpu cycles that even the mouse pointer starts stuttering on a modern pc? What the hell is the cpu doing that requires hogging multiple billions of cycles to read a tiny amount of data?
November 11, 2012Great question! Have you ever tried to figure it out?
November 29, 2012And addition to my previous comment,You also have to remember Vipul Jain mentioned about background task performance while copying files. This problem lies in between fragmented external hard drive and CPU as I’m putting my emphasis on performance issues of the computer itself.
1.)Data transfer rates of the external hard drive has nothing to do with slowing your computer down when running other applications.
2).The Universal serial bus speed has nothing to do with the performance of the computer itself.
July 24, 2012