External hard drive ridiculously slow

Factual Questions
1

I thought I had this all figured out.

I do a lot of photo editing with very large photo files. Because of this, I thought it would make sense to buy two external hard drives.

So, I have two externals, J and K. All of my photos are on J, and are regularly and automatically backed up to K.

When I first did this, the work was not lightning quick, but do-able. Recently, though, even loading an image (from the external J drive) into the editing software is a molasses/January proposition.

When I load a photo file into the C drive, it zips along nicely.

Possibly pertinent info: This is a Windows 7 PC. Drive J is 1 GB, Drive K is 1.5 GB, both connected via USB. The photo editing software is Adobe Lightroom.

I have defragged J with no noticeable improvement.

I know I could load into C, edit, then save to J; I really want to avoid doing it this way, though. I want them all to live in J, back up to K.

Any comments appreciated.
mmm

2

Are both plugged into USB 2.0 or 3.0? Windows will usually yell at you if they aren’t. USB 1.0 is obscenely slow, something like 40 times slower than 2.0. Does switching around USB ports help?

Also, do the drives have any other connectors, like FireWire or eSATA?

So, is it happening with both drives? To test you, would need to copy both to/from C:, preferably the same files. Not J>K.

3

Make sure you don’t have any USB1 devices (including mouse/keyboard). If you do it is possible that they are sharing the same port via a internal USB hub.

4

How large are the files?

5

Q) Have you closed all other applications while doing this copy?

I would.

6

Both are USB 2.0. Haven’t tried switching USB ports, but I will.

The drives are USB only.

I dunno if it’s happening with both drives; I will check. Good thought.

I do have a wireless mouse/keyboard; don’t know if it’s a USB 1. How can I tell?

Each file is around 10MB.

I think so, but I’ll check that as well.
Thanks for the good suggestions.
mmm

7

Just to clarify the “external drives” are actually terabyte size spinning platter based hard drives not little 1 and 1.5 gigabyte sized thumbdrives correct?

Are these drives connected via an external USB powered hub, or plugged directly into the motherboard USB ports?

8

Yeah, sorry. :o 1 and 1.5 TB.

I’m not sure what an ‘external USB powered hub’ is; they are plugged into the USB ports on the computer.
mmm