Why are transfer speeds from a USB hard drive to Vista so slow?

Question

I have two hard drives from an XP computer and am trying to transfer files to a new Vista PC. The files are generally large media files. Vista chokes on it every time -- I get the window that says Vista is calculating the transfer time, and it just hangs forever!

Answer 1

This is a known problem with Vista. Transferring large files is incredibly slow, in my experience files over 800MB will be a pain to transfer locally.

Part of this could be your hard drives, I suggest checking your Windows Performance Index available in the Control Panel. If your hard drives are slow, say less than a 4.0 score then that might be part of your problem.

I doubt it has anything to do with your memory but it MIGHT... I say again, MIGHT but don't count on it.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=windows&articleId=9014558&taxonomyId=125
As stated in that article, there IS a fix for it but it is an optional download only if Microsoft determines you need it and there may be a $60 surcharge for it.

Though, that fix is slated to be part of Vista SP1, live with it for now... try to get Microsoft to allow you the update or just wait for it. Those are your only real options, in my opinion.

Answer 2

Possibly, that your XP and VISTA's filesystem are different. If your XP's FAT32 and your VISTA is using NTFS, it could somewhat slowdown especially if you're transferring Media Files more than 4 gigs, it's a hassle. Kindly double check if your Vista is indeed NTFS, I suggest that you convert your FAT32 drive into NTFS

here's the site on how to do it.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx

Answer 3

The drop in speed could be caused by parts of the laptop overheating The processor will "throttle back" as it gets near to overheating to avoid shutting down completely If the target drive was very fragmented or nearly full, write times will increase as all the smaller non-contiguous sectors will get used near the end

Answer 4

Maybe you need MORE RAM. Maybe you can use END TASK on programs that you don't need.

Check your system at http://www.coastmemory.com If you get 2GB of RAM, Vista will speed up considerably.

Good luck and Happy Computing!

Answer 5

usb is slow only sending about 15mbs? i had the same problem... took me 35min to transfer 3500 songs..

Answer 6

because you aren't on the internet it works at your processor speed