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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  2. Gary Graziano 0 Reputation points
    2026-09-15T17:45:46.42+00:00

    I can certainly try a different USB port. I've mostly tried copying within File Explorer. Tera Copy is only a slight improvement. Since installing Tera Copy I'm offered a choice of either Explorer or Tera Copy when copying files.

    This is what the archive My Music on C: looks like: Music archive.jpg

    This is what the Properties of My Music\ Jazz (the largest folder in the archive) looks like: Jazz.jpg

    In searching on-line I saw that with Windows the copy function begins fast, but slows down when the cache is filled.

    I'm trying to copy from C:\My Music to D:\Blues or Jazz, or Rock, etc. Can you give me the correct xcopy or robocopy command? I think that might bypass the cache limitation.

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  3. DaveM121 933.5K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2026-09-16T05:23:31.85+00:00

    Sorry, I was offline.

    The RoboCopy command is this one, if you just want to copy the data to the other drive

    (I assume the other drive letter is D, you may need to change that).

    (You also need to set the correct source and destination folder names).

    robocopy "C:\SourceFolder" "D:\DestinationFolder" /E

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  4. Gary Graziano 0 Reputation points
    2026-09-16T14:44:17.0066667+00:00

    I'm attaching a .jpg of the error I get when attempting to use robocopy. What am I doing wrong? robocopy.jpg

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  5. DaveM121 933.5K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2026-09-16T14:50:01.24+00:00

    You did not specify a folder on the D drive to copy the files to, for example the command should be.

    robocopy "C:\MyMusic\Jazz" "D:\Jazz" /E

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