Windows – Why does the speed decrease while copying from an external harddrive

I have the same issue with network drives.

I have tried MANY things, however, unfortunately I was unable to find a resolution using Windows Explorer / GUI.

The two solutions I came up with in the end were either to use the command prompt which worked very well - just a little annoying, and in the end I settled with (Teracopy, available on Ninite for easy installation).

With Teracopy, I find that it takes a little longer to start (talking ~1-2 seconds) which is annoying with small files where Windows would be instant (and 95% of my file operations), however, on large files or when using a lot of little files, it is a brilliant tool with many advantages over the standard Windows GUI. For this reason, I do no use it as the default file copy, but when doing large or complex operations, I always use it.

In Device Manager, right-click the USB drive in the Disk drives category, then select Properties, switch to Policies tab, and choose "Optimize for performance". Click OK to keep it.

Note: If you use this method, make sure you use the "Safely remove hardware" icon that appears in the notification area when you plug in the device (the notification area is the little area near the clock on the taskbar).