Can I speed up copying large numbers of files?

Gary Graziano 0 Reputation points
2026-09-15T13:47:33.6833333+00:00

I'm running Win 11Pro on a Dell Latitude laptop with 64GB of memory and 1TB hard drive. I've been trying to copy my .mp3 files to a 1TB USB drive. There are about 140GB worth of files. I started copying by genre, and the process kept stalling. Even breaking it down further by artist was extremely slow. I tried installing Fast Copy and Tera Copy, and both of those encounter similar problems. I disabled my antivirus program which helped a little, but I'm wondering if there is something I can tweak in Windows to enable faster copying. (I also tried xcopy and robocopy at both the command prompt and Power Shell, and could not get the commands right.)

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Performance and system failures
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  1. DaveM121 933.5K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2026-09-15T14:22:02.5133333+00:00

    1

    Is that 1TB external drive a USB 3.0 drive, and if so, are you connecting to a USB 3.0 port on your Dell laptop and have you tried connecting the external drive to another USB 3.0 port..

    2

    You mention you started copying the files by genre, where are you copying the files from is that from inside File Explorer or from inside a media player app.

    3

    Right click the folder you store your MP3 files in File Explorer and select Properties.

    Please provide a screenshot of the resulting properties dialog box.

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