Particular files that drastically slow down my backup to external hard drive

[Misty]

Just to let you know that I am not sitting back, but have started off the checks and researching the ideas, etc.

I have three external drives for my backups, one of which is kept at our daughters place and rotated with one of the others regularly. All are USB 3 and my desktop only has USB3.
Have got lost as to which of two of these was causing the problem, but suspect it was the one currently at our daughter's place, so will get hold of that one soon, today or tomorrow.

In the meantime I have been running checks on the other suspect. It is NTFS and I have carried out an Optimise. Was told that it was not fragmented, but did a defrag anyway and
at the end was told that it was 1% consolidated. Checked and was told that the device driver is up-to-date (also checked that with Windows 10 update). Currently running a scan
of it using Windows Defender.

Will try out Teracopy. Will keep working on the many steps of this project.

[Lawrence]

Do you know what drives they are?, most older ones will probably have 5200RPM spinners in them and if they are 2.5" they will be 5200's

CrystalDiskinfo will tell you whats going on age/health/problems

https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

A SSD external will be quicker in most cases but could be limited by something else

After watching this thread it got me thinking about my 4 external Drives (HP Pocket media Drives) most i acquired and upgraded from 80GB to 500GB but they are 5200 2.5's and it gave me a idea as I have a spare Samsung Sata SSD that should slot straight in
Only it will be limited to USB 2.0 on the front but 3.1 on the rear

[feersumendjinn]

If you have a usb3.1 port, you could try one of these
https://www.google.com/search?client...&q=nvme+vs+ssd
along with an enclosure for it.
https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/ENC...CABEgKslfD_BwE
My laptop has a nvme c: drive and it transfers a 2.2GB Linux iso to the ext nvme drive within 2.5 sec.

[Misty]

Actually, feersumendjinn, by a peculiar quirk of fate I do have an SSD drive that is essentially spare. It's a long story.

It is a 465GB Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB

As my existing external drives are all the old hard drive types, I could have it put into an enclosure, where presumably it would be faster than the existing ones?

[Misty]

Apart from working my way through everyone's suggestions, I also checked the Task Manager, at the time that part of the backup was working, ie Lightroom. I noticed that a very high user was Dropbox, which was using 26% of the CPU. Since I hardly ever use it, here it was working away in the background, so I have did an "End task". Also stopped Skype, small usage, which I only ever contact one person with. Neither of them now is triggered on Startup.