I’ve found a way to utterly ruin my computer’s performance: transferring large files via FTP (specifically, I use WinSCP with the transfer rate cap set to 8192 KB/s). I do not know the threshold, but I know it is >16 GB, as I transferred a 16 GB file via FTP without issue earlier today.
I have noticed, first after transferring a 27 GB file via FTP and more recently a 23 GB file, that the system slows down significantly during transfer and continues to do so long after the transfer ends, only being alleviated by rebooting. Chrome will randomly freeze, network connections will randomly drop (IRC, electron apps, Steam, browsers, etc), VLC will struggle to play a small WAV file, MMCs will take multiple minutes to load, etc. And it only gets worse - within a day, if I do not reboot, I will be faced with catastrophically bad performance, with even task manager taking upwards of 5 minutes to load, despite the system load as reported by task manager rarely being >30% on CPU, GPU, RAM, and all disks.
Does anyone have any idea why this happens? Is it just time to reinstall Windows?
Edit: specs, for those who might be wondering:
Win 10 Pro x64, build 2004 (though this happened with 1909 as well)
R7-1700
64 GB RAM
GTX 1070 Ti
A mix of 3 SSDs and 1 HDD; the files were being saved to an HGST HDN726050ALE610 (5 TB HDD)
I haven’t tried unlimited speed in WinSCP because each time I’ve been watching a youtube video while transferring files and didn’t want that to get interrupted.
Update: This also happens with FileZilla. However, copying the same file to/from a network drive via Windows Explorer does not cause my system to grind to a halt.
This is quite a long shot but that’s what I can think of for now: I think there’s an issue with the LAN drivers. I’d try to reinstall them from scratch (as much as possible obv.) and see if the situation improves.
Or, before reinstalling the LAN drivers, I’d increase the Rx buffer from the configuration page of the LAN adapter you’re using and maybe enable jumbo packets.
A bit of a late followup/bump, but I found something interesting today:
Transferring large files from FTP onto my G drive (a Samsung 850 Evo 1 TB) causes the horrendous performance degradation, but transferring to my C drive (an HP EX950 2 TB) does not.
I know the 850 is in good condition, so this is probably a Windows problem. I’m planning on reinstalling Windows in a week or so, will report back with whether that fixes the problem or not.
I have a Gigabyte GA-AB350-Gaming 3 motherboard. The drive is hooked up to SATA0.
Reinstalling Windows seems to have worked. I can copy 30 GB files via WinSCP multiple times and not a hint of a slowdown beyond Windows’ natural performance degradation.