From your screenie, it looks like the second drive listed (the Samsung) is an SSD. I'd assume that's your Operating System (C:) drive. The other's a HDD, and you're copying files from one folder on that drive to another on that drive. This may be the issue, especially if the drive is fairly full and fragmented. Then Windows has to really shuffle data around in order to be able to copy it.

I doubt this will help at all, but "how" are you copying the files? I have issues on the work laptop using windows own copy/paste, sometimes using the tree part and right clicking moving up is faster. Anyways, at home I always use Teracopy, it just seems to work far better than windows copy, and has the ability to check files after copying to make sure they are the same. Even if that doesn't help your problem I would still recommend using Teracopy.

Well, maybe your upstream is just too slow.
Is Win10 submitting all copied data to M$'s servers for "your convenience"? ;) Me too. It takes me about an hour or more.

It takes time for a hard drive to position the head and it takes time until the data passes the head.
If you have many small files the chance for sequential read is extreeemly low.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOPS#Mechanical_hard_drives

The problem is you are copying on the same drive, reading and writing simultaneously on the same device, it would be faster to copy to another (external?) drive then another location on the same drive.

the problem you have, is that you are replying to a 5 year old thread.

Has the copy process finished already, or are you still waiting?

Maybe some day...

My experience on my laptop is that if ANY windows update process is running, file transfers slow to a crawl.

Not sure if thats the case here, but may be something worth considering (it doesnt happen often on the desktop with the ultraunobtanium m2 ssd thingy - even between that and the old 7200rpm drive on it).

Edit: though to be clear - on the laptop this also happens with downloads, but it has one drive and not the fastest net capability).

I've seen two other forum sites, where after a certain period of time it will ask to confirm if indeed you wanted to reply to an old thread, with the possibility that it was a waste of time or no longer relevant.

However unless the thread auto-locks, i doubt the problem fully goes away.

A thread is a thread, and unless an old one is dealing with out-dated things that are no longer relevant or are potentially harmful, it is just as viable as any other thread if folk occasionally show an interest in it. For one reason or another, interesting threads can disappear for a while until someone revives them.

This thread is one of those, and something I feel I can reinforce some elements of plus add to.

I likewise use TeraCopy and have been doing so for many years, to copy or move files around. I've even improved upon it with the addition of my own front-end, that has a Timer and Sleep ability, jobs etc etc. TeraCopy proved its worth to me back with Windows XP and continues to do so with every version of Windows since. I only use the free variant.

Copying many small files around is always a much slower process, especially to the same drive, where your read/write head is constantly going back and forth, and you can see how hard the work is by how much the drive heats up. In some cases, say with a few hundred gigabytes you can even kill a drive, especially an older one, if you aren't careful.

A 10 Gb file will copy oodles faster than thousands of smaller files adding up to 10 Gb.

One very helpful tip when copying many files, is to add a temporary exception or exclusion to your AV program at both the source folder and the destination folder, removing those after you have finished. You don't need to have the same files scanned every time you copy or move them around. If they are on your PC, they have been scanned at least once and if you access them your AV will scan them again.

With MS Security Essentials for example, in the section called Excluded files and locations, I would add something like the following, and then click Save.

C:\Users\Timboli\Downloads\2022\09\*
D:\Backups\Downloads\2022\09\*

The first path being the source, the second the destination.

Once I have copied or moved files and folders in the source folder to the destination folder, I remove those two entries and click Save again, and we are back to where things were with my AV.

That tip if used, increases the speed of file copying or moving, heaps. So 35 minutes could be just 5 minutes instead.

Internet speed vs hard drive speed.

When I had a severe version of this problem, turns out my hard drive was dying. I apparently had it for a super long time compared to its usual assumed lifespan. I replaced it with an SSD.