>>Is the drive enclosure and the port USB3?
it has a DELL's not-so-good-USB3-tech, the trans rate doesnt stay 140mb/sec long
but my the other pc ACER's USB3 can stay 140mb/sec as long as it likes (copying from USB to HDD).

>>is the transfer rate issue the interface/controllers and not the drive.
after several day trials of the seagate 5TB, i concluded that it was more of a seagate USB-HDD issue than the DELL'not-so-good USB3 controller

>>It might be better to SATA attach the drive, either internally or via eSATA.
if this was like an internal HDD to an internal HDD, i never had a problem, always good and optimal.

>>Is the anti virus a factor?
no, antivirus was not installed in win 8.1 (i install,use for 20 min, then uninstall till next time), and for Win10, has minimal antivirus default setting that i have no control of

>>Do you really need to backup those game directories, when games are often patched and you >>could recover by re-installing and patching?
a good point, almost of all games usually get to be over after 1 to 3 patching jobs, except for the games from Blizzard.
i threw away all my CD's 8 years ago, and as of today just now, i deleted 40% of all my ISOs, and deleted 15% of GOG's DRM (digital rights management or simply put, copy protection) free files.

i have a profound reason for doing this (simply put, install, backup, uninstall, play the backup)
i dig out all the registries and try to find the reg that is responsible for halting the game
i will try to make it drive directory registry independent or at least make it a simple reg dependence
and then i remove all logos and ads by directly editing or deleting graphic and sound files that are responsible in the mists of file-seas
and all music files also get either deleted or nullified.
and then i make a batch file to put some intelligence to the game environment and to manage cache, log files, auto generated savedgames and other trash files
so there will be NO 2nd installation for me, it is NOT possible to reinstall after i spend hours and days to hack the game.
i must make many backups. and i decided today that i am not gonna keep ISOs and GOG-setups any more, and soon, most will be gone
i constantly improve the game batches little by little and edit a TXT as to what to do and what i did in each game dir

>>If you are doing a whole drive backup then use a tool that backs up the drive instead of the files, which should be quicker
i must try this, but i have little knowledge of it.

>>duplicate everything using robocopy onto externally attached USB drives.
i will take a look at robocopy

>>NTFS should handle the many small files better than exFAT.
i started with exFAT, it was a total failure, after 4TB USB-HDD fill (about 40 hours long backup, i copied about 0.8 million files at this point which shouldnt be a problem, it was more of dir structures like starcraft 2 or Windows OS with many dirs with 1 or 2 files in each dir). i reformated to NTFS. it started shaky and i couldnt wait to fill up to 4TB/5TB, i started to test from 1.3TB fill and it worked well there, the backup was possible for many file system. it just hit the starcraft 2's dir structures, the transfer went down to 2~5 mb/sec but it wasnt 30kb, and it soon regained the trans rate 35Mb

>>github.
>>ZIP64: 2^32 files, size 16EB
ok i will ask this to github

>>SSD's is where most of the development is.
oh i see this was the reason, so they are done with the magnetic tech

note
i think the seagate's 5TB USB HDD (one touch) uses the laptop versions of HDDs, which are slow and stupid and no noise and dont get much hotter and bottle necked. when a laptop HDD is being used, you cant really do anything else with a laptop until the HDD usage gets over, they are totally bottle-necked. for some smart people, 1st thing they do is replace the laptop's HDD as soon as they buy it, a SSD is 5 to 10 times more expensive, i will wait till SSDs become more practical and economical

thanks Mr Ben, i think i got a little more perception and insight after this. NTFS worked, so backup worked