Too slow HDD read in a specific folder

Question

I have a serious problem here and I'm tired trying to find a solution. I've a folder on my HDD in Partition D:, that folder contains my programs and it is 70 GB size. Each time I open this folder it takes too long time to open and to list its files and folders. I tried many solutions with no luck:

1. Defrag Hard Disk.
2. Scan Hard Disk for errors.
3. Stop Indexing service.
4. Stop Super Fetch service.
5. Disable folders thumbnails.

And none worked!!

P.S: I notice some odd thing and wanted to share it and I'm not really sure is it related to my problem or not, The mentioned folder is more than 70 GB size, when I check its size by selecting all sub folders and files, but when I check its size externally from the folder properties it is only 10.5 GB!! Also the count of files and folders in both cases is different..

Operating system is Windows 10

EDIT: this is an image of the folder structure:

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Answer 1

I think that the delay could be caused by the time Explorer takes to create the thumbnails, and since Explorer is scanning all the folders for composing the thumbnails of the folder contents (for example, like the Foxit Reader folder of the screen shot) that would be a lot of executables to scan based on the screen shot. Files that use individual thumbnails, for example images or executables, usually takes more time to be processed (specially installers, maybe due to AV scanning).

I would try two things:

1. Use a view that doesn't show thumbnails, either switching the view of that folder to Details or List, or disabling the use of thumbnails in Explorer. Doing this would make Explorer extract the icons only for the files in the current level.

2. Move all the installers that you have in the root of that folder inside another subfolder, so you only have folders and non-executable files in the first level.

Note that changing the view would affect only that folder while disabling the thumbnails affect all the folders, but if you don't mind about having the thumbnails removing them would probably improve the performance also for other folders.

For disabling the thumbnails do this:

• Select the View tab of Explorer toolbar and press Options.
• Go to the View tab of the options panel and in the option list check the one named Always show icons, never thumbnails.

Answer 2

My first choice would be to buy a 128gb or 256gb SSD, and if that isn't fast enough for you a M.2 SSD.

Each one has read/write performance levels that will never be achieved by a hard drive.

The SSD should give you 500mb/s read and anywhere from 200-500mb/s write depending on the model.

The M.2 can provide 2000mb/s read with 1000-1500 write. Also more expensive models can achieve 3000mb/s with a corresponding increase in speed.

You can't do much with a hard drive. The beginning of the hard drive is some what faster than the rest. You could create a 120-200gb partition, at the front of the drive, move the data there. However, I doubt this will achieve more than 10-20% improvement.

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