Speed up Data Tranfer To & From External Drives

Transferring data between a PC’s internal storage and an external drive is one of the most common tasks a user performs. Photos, videos, important files, data backups; they all need to be transferred to and fro, sometimes multiple times.

That’s why slow transfer speeds can be so frustrating. No one wants to wait ten minutes for a few gigabytes of data to transfer, and it can be particularly troublesome if you’re late for a meeting or appointment and need the data now. Fortunately, there are a few easy ways to improve transfer speeds.

Set Your USB Drive To Better Performance

Windows defaults USB drives to use a “Quick removal” data transfer policy. This disables write caching, which slows down transfer speeds, but lets you disconnect a device safely without using the “Safely Remove Hardware” prompt.

To disable this feature, do a Windows Search for Device Manager, and open it. Expand the Disk Drives tree and locate the USB drive you’d like to improve (it must be plugged in to the PC). Double-click the drive’s icon and, in the window that appears, find the Policies tab. Click the “Better performance” radio button and then, underneath, check the “Enable write caching on the device” checkbox (some devices don’t support this, however). Then click OK.

Remember, if you enable this feature, you will have to remove the device from within Windows before unplugging it. Failure to do so can result in data loss. To make this easier for you, right-click on your desktop and create a new shortcut, then enter the following as its path:

%windir%\System32\control.exe hotplug.dll

This creates a shortcut that takes you directly to the Safely Remove Hardware menu.

Change The File System

The file system you use to format your drive can have an impact on performance. Many come from the factory with conservative formatting that allocates data in small chunks, which in turn maximizes the drive’s storage capacity. Increasing the size of these chunks, however, can improve performance.

If you use Windows, you’ll want to use the NTFS file format with an allocation size of 64 kilobytes. This is the quickest configuration for a modern Windows PC. If you also need to use the drive with DOS, Mac OS X, Linux or your a device like your TV, FAT32 is the right choice, and it too can be set to an allocation size of 64 kilobytes.

Formatting via Windows is simple. Just open My Computer, right-click the USB drive, and click format. A menu will open in which you can change the file system and allocation unit size. Set each to what you desire, then click Start to begin formatting. Remember, as with any format, this will delete all data on the drive – make sure nothing important is on it before you begin!