Arch Linux

GOKOP

Member

Registered: 2018-04-29

Posts: 51

Copying to USB slows down to zero and never finishes

Whenever I try to copy a big file to an USB drive, at some point copying starts to slow down until it reaches zero or near zero and so it never finishes.
Problem occurs whether copying invovles thunar, cp command, (I guess because it doesn't show you the speed obviously) or unetbootin, for example.
Any ideas?

Last edited by GOKOP (2018-05-19 11:24:30)

dviktor

Member

From: Moscow

Registered: 2015-10-18

Posts: 162

Re: Copying to USB slows down to zero and never finishes

The copy process on USB device usually involves caching of the files being written. As soon as caching is completed actual writing to flash drive is started giving you impression that it incredibly slow
You can decrease cache size and see if it will help

teckk

Member

Registered: 2013-02-21

Posts: 590

Re: Copying to USB slows down to zero and never finishes

I've had that happen a couple of time lately. Where the copy
process to the usb drive stopped, period. It was to a ntfs drive,
mounted with ntfs-3g. I haven't had that happen with a fat drive.
What file system were you writing to?

GOKOP

Member

Registered: 2018-04-29

Posts: 51

Re: Copying to USB slows down to zero and never finishes

I was writing to a FAT32 drive.

@dviktor
But it copied more than half of the file and then stopped. And I was waiting for quite long

Last edited by GOKOP (2018-05-19 20:05:44)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,849

Re: Copying to USB slows down to zero and never finishes

Look at the status LED of the USB device. As long as it's blinking, the device is still writing.

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc