Moving files inside my NTFS partition is as slow as copying them. What could be the cause of this?

I'm trying to tidy up my folders and files on one of my NTFS formatted external hard drives, a 2TB Western Digital Elements drive.

When trying to move files from one folder to the other, the process takes as long as copying the files would, or so it seems anyway.

I have another WD Elements 2TB where this process takes only seconds, if even that. Which is how it should be as those files don't need to be cloned but only the file table needs to be updated, as I recall.

What on earth could be wrong? Could the hard-drive be failing already?

Additional information with regards to comments below:

• No File Compression activated (or other attributes I know of)
• The external HDD is connected per USB
• Well...Windows says NTFS
• It's not a NAS, it's just an external HDD
• both folders are on the same partition
• none of the files are links or reparse points

• My OS is Windows 7

• moving one file once is slow, but moving the file back is as fast as always (maybe a hint?)

I also have used ChkDsk, but only the "superficial" check (only the first of two boxes checked).

EDIT: I just found out that moving files in the other folders on the HD is very fast, while moving files in the folder that starts with an underscore "_" is slow as molasses. As soon as I removed the underscore, the speed went up. What the hell?

Solution 1:

1 - check your antivirus! did you disable antivirus for a white and test the performance?

2 - exclude your external hard disk in antivirus from scanning.

3 - i recommended to use Total Commander as file manager that has many many features specially great file copy tools.