If the USB file transfer gets stuck at 99% or any other percentage number while copying or moving the files to an external USB storage device, the solutions provided in this article will help you. According to the users, file transfer slows down when it reaches 99% toward completion. After that, it gets stuck there for a few minutes and then the process gets completed.
USB file transfer stuck at 99% on Windows 11/10
The file transfer speed also depends on the hardware. However, in this case, users reported that the file transfer gets stuck for a few minutes after 99% of the files are being copied. Apply the following fixes if the USB file transfer gets stuck at 99% on your Windows computer while copying or moving the files to an external USB storage device.
- Restart Windows Explorer
- Change File Explorer Options
- Change Policies for your USB storage device
- Temporarily disable your antivirus
- Use Robocopy
- Use third-party file transfer software
Let’s see all these fixes in detail.
1] Restart Windows Explorer
The first thing that you should do is restart Windows Explorer. The steps to do this are as follows:
- Open the Task Manager.
- Select the Processes tab.
- Scroll down and locate Windows Explorer.
- Once you find it, right-click on it and select Restart.
2] Change File Explorer Options
If restarting Windows Explorer did not help, try changing the File Explorer Options. Go through the following instructions:
- Press the Win + R keys to open the Run command box.
- Type control.exe folders and click OK.
- The File Explorer Options window will appear. Go to the View tab.
- Scroll down and select the Launch folder windows in a separate process checkbox.
- Click Apply and then click OK.
- Close File Explorer (if it is already opened) and open it again.
Now, check if the problem persists. By default, all the processes in File Explorer run in a single explorer.exe process. This will create a problem as if one window running in the explorer.exe process crashes, it will cause other windows in the explrer.exe process to hang or crash until the process restarts.
When you enable this option in the File Explorer, each process you carry out in explorer.exe will start as a separate process. You can view all the separate processes in the Task Manager. Due to this, other windows in File Explorer remain unaffected when one window freezes or crashes.
3] Change Policies for your USB storage device
Enabling the disk write caching for your external USB storage device can help improve performance. If the problem still persists, we suggest you enable the disk write caching on your external USB storage device.
Though enabling this option for your external USB storage devices results in improved performance, a power outage or equipment failure may result in data loss or corruption. Therefore, after enabling this option, it is recommended to use the Safely Remove Hardware feature before removing your USB storage device.
4] Temporarily disable your antivirus
Some users reported that the issue was occurring due to their antivirus software. We suggest you temporarily disable your antivirus and see if this helps. If yes, you need to contact your antivirus vendor for support.
5] Use Robocopy
You can also use the Robocopy command line utility to copy your files faster. It copies data faster than the normal copy-paste method. Using robocopy is easy. You have to use the robocopy command in the following format:
robocopy <source> <destination> <filename with extension>
For example, if you want to copy an image file, say image.png from the directory D:\The Windows Club to the directory E:\New Folder, the command will be:
robocopy "D:\The Windows Club" "E:\New Folder" "image.png"
If you want to copy a folder with all subfolders, you have to use the syntaxes /s and /e. These two syntaxes will copy all the subfolders and empty subfolders respectively. For example, if I want to copy a folder The Windows Club located in the D directory to the New Folder located on the E drive, I will use the robocopy command as:
robocopy /s /e "D:\The Windows Club" "E:\New Folder"
6] Use third-party file transfer software
You can also use third-party fast file copy software. There are many free fast copy tools available on the internet that you can download and install on your Windows PC. These free tools are useful if you have to transfer or copy a large amount of data from one hard drive to another hard drive.
That’s it. I hope this helps.
Read: External Hard Drive keeps disconnecting in Windows.
Why is my file transfer stuck?
If your file transfer gets stuck midway, your antivirus might be causing the problem. You can check this by temporarily disabling your antivirus. Also, make sure that the destination drive is in NTFS format.
Why my USB is not copying files
If your USB cable is not copying the files, check if it is damaged or not. If you are unable to copy the files to a USB flash drive, there may be a permission issue with our files. If you get an error, like The file is too large for the destination file system while copying the files to your USB flash drive, you need to convert it to NTFS format.
Read next: The directory name is invalid USB error on Windows.
