First post here. I hope someone can help me. Yesterday I bought an external HDD (Toshiba Canvio Basics, the 4TB one) to make backups of my files. On my main computer, I have a dual boot installation (Ubuntu 20.04 and Windows 10). I also have an old laptop, which still runs on Ubuntu 14.04. My problem is that my new HDD works just fine on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 14.04, but I get extreme low transfer speeds on Ubuntu 20.04, which is my main OS (where I have most the files I want to backup). It works like this: after every reboot, the HDD works as expected for like 1-2 mins. Then it slows down and eventually freezes. It stops transferring files. I have checked multiple forums and tried different solutions, but to no avail. I formatted the disk to Ext4, same behavior. I tried different USB ports, same behavior. It only slows down on Ubuntu 20.04. Tried benchmarking it on that OS, but it freezes after a while, and I can't finish the test. I didn't want to mess with BIOS configuration, as it works well on Windows 10 and it's the same computer... I just don't understand why it slows down after 1-2 min. I also tried that hdparm command, but it gives me an error. I must say, I'm not that of a Linux expert, I don't know what else to try. But it looks like a software problem to me. Hope someone can help me with this problem, I gave all my afternoon into this and feel like I'm wasting my time... Thank you in advance.
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Toshiba is notorious for using SMR on most of their USB disks. This would result in seeing relatively decent transfer times until the buffer is full, then a noticeable drop. The larger the file copy, the worse the performance. You may want to do some investigation of your drive by model number to see if it’s using SMR (as opposed to the more traditional CMR) as a means to write data to the platters 😕– matigoJul 24, 2022 at 21:28
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Thank you for your reply. I think that could be the problem. I already was suspecting that Ubuntu 20.04 wasn't handling well this drive cache. I did a quick search and it seems that my drive is using SMR (probably). Is there some kind of workaround to make it work properly? It gets to a point it completely stops transferring any data! As I said, this does not happen on W10 or older versions of Ubuntu...– ErtekyJul 24, 2022 at 22:46
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SMR is load-dependent. The more you throw at it, the slower it gets. This is not a failure of the OS, but of how the drive itself operates. Without knowing more about how you are using the disk with the other OSes, I would not be quick to jump to the conclusion that it’s 20.04 that is the problem. If 20.04 is sending a great deal more data to the drive than W10 or other OSes, then that could point to a reason for hideous speeds.– matigoJul 25, 2022 at 1:08
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That makes sense. But yesterday I threw 245GB of data from said laptop (the old one with Ubuntu 14.04) and it didn't stop the process. It took around 3h to finish, but I interpreted this as normal, as laptop is from 2010 and doesn't have any USB 3 ports, only USB 2 ones. In my main computer, with USB 3 ports, it gets to a point that it stops transferring. I wouldn't mind it being as slow as USB 2, because I only want it to make backups, but if it stops, it's to no use. And it stops after maybe 5-10GB, let's say: it's fast. I'll try replicating that on W10, and I'll report back– ErtekyJul 25, 2022 at 5:51
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Done. I tried to transfer 5000 files (around 25 GB) from W10. After 1000 files, it also showed same behavior as Ubuntu 20.04. Slowed to 100 KB/s and said it would took days. Sad. I'm sorry, my other tests with W10 were with less files. So now I know it's the drive fault. I did a quick search on that model, and other people were saying that SMR are faulty and won't work well at all. I just don't get why yesterday worked fine with the laptop. Maybe because it was the first transfer... How can Toshiba sell such faulty drives?? Is returning it my only option?– ErtekyJul 25, 2022 at 6:36
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