Not Able to Defragment External HDD

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Brandon Byrnes

PCHF Member
Jan 3, 2017
602
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40
Wisconsin
I recently bought a 1TB internal HDD and put it in an external HDD enclosure. Proceeded to copy my files over to it, I zipped the files to make them smaller. Once on the HDD I unzipped them and deleted the zip files, and now my external HDD is running VERY slow, most times File Explorer won't completely load, and it is not showing thumbnails for most files on the HDD just a blank page icon.
I should mention that this drive contains videos and photos, probably about 500 videos and around 50,000 photos so I can definitely understand some lag when loading but not to the point where File Explorer just doesn't completely load. The HDD is a 5400 rpm model, and the enclosure is a USB 3.0 enclosure. I would like to maybe analyze it and possibly defragment it considering I've added around 500GB of files not including the old zipped files that I deleted after unzipping. In all I would say it had atleast 900GB but after deleting the old zipped files it's down to 500GB.
Why am I not getting the option to defragment this drive, but I get the option to defragment a flash drive (even though generally flash drives don't need to be Optimized)? I have reset the indexing, and that didn't work, I have each folder on the HDD optimized for the type of file contained in it video/photos, I've tried restarting File Explorer to no avail, I basically did everything that is mentioned on this webpage and nothing has worked xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx if you guys have any ideas I would appreciate it, because it has gotten to the point where the drive is almost unusable. I'm sure someone will suggest taking it out of the enclosure and installing it, but I needs it to be portable so thats not an option.

Edit: link flagged as malicious by web of trust.
 
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some things to turn off for that drive to try and speed it up....

turn off content indexing, turn off auto-defrag, turn off drive compression - all done through File Explorer, right click that drive, Properties.
change to View to Detail, not Icons, to stop thumbnail creation slowing you down.

is the USB3 enclosure plugged into a USB3 port?
does it still happen when connected to another PC?
OS version and build?
at 5400rpm, I'm assuming it's a 2.5" drive?

painful I know but what about copying all contents over to the PC and reformatting the drive?
then copy it all back. the copy process will do the defrag for you!
 
I did everything you said and it seems to be working alot faster. I do enable thunbnails but only when I need to, but generally I'm keeping the view on details view and that is helping to load it faster. I also did a clean install of Windows becuase everything was messed up at one point (Ithink I had a virus or malware). Can we keep this thread open for one more week and I can give you an update after a week to see if it still goes smoothly?
 
good news.
while we wait for news on how it hangs together over the next few days, tell us your OS and build in case it's needed later, that way we'll be ahead of the curve!
 
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