Email Attachments

[Grandpappy]

Recently my email attachments have been taking an unusually long time to upload, before the email is sent and I'm wondering if a 'bug' of sorts has crept into my system despite my security?
Or perhaps there has been a change to Google or something?
Anyone any ideas?

[Buenchico]

What upload speed do you see when you run this test?
https://www.speedtest.net/
(NB: On an ADSL line it's normal for one's upload speed to only be roughly 10% of the download speed).

[Grandpappy]

0.84

[Buenchico]

If you're using a 'non-fibre' [= ADSL] service (with your download speed being, perhaps, 8 or 9 mbps), that's OK. If you've got a fibre service, with a download speed of perhaps 30 to 80 Mbps, there's something wrong with your line.

[Grandpappy]

Buenchico,
Thanks for replying.
My download speed has only ever achieved 5mb twice in the last ten years! Having said that, I can honestly say that, this is the second time in the past six months when I have experienced a 'lag' in uploading attachments to my emails. It has not been a problem before!
Cheers

[bhg481]

Am I misunderstanding something here or is my knowledge of how emails work faulty?
My understanding is that sending an email with attachments is a two stage process. First you gather the files you want to send and attach them to your email, all this is inside your own computer and the time it takes depends on how well your computer is performing. Then you "send" your email off into the ether; the time this part takes depends on your ethernet upload speed.
It's not clear to me which part of the process Grandpappy is having problems with.

[Grandpappy]

to bhg481-My process is: I write my mail & then click the 'paperclip' symbol to attach my images,notes,etc.( which I usually have on my desktop)-this is the bit that is taking so long!! Uploading the 'data' before sending the completed email message.
Whilst I appreciate that a large image (eg.15mb) would take longer than a small .jpg file of 2.5mb to upload the situation now is that the small files are taking so long that the bigger files are become soooo-time consuming that it's caused me to write in to the 'Brain Containment Chamber'.
See what it's done to me?

[bhg481]

That, to me, feels like it's a problem with your computer, rather than your internet speed. Desktop is usually space on your system disc, so the delay would seem to be in copying the files from one area of your disc to another. Is your C drive getting full? Do you have any other discs attached that you can copy the data to? That way you could attach the copies to the email and see it that's any quicker. By "other discs" I mean completely separate pieces of hardware, not partitions on the same disc. If your system disc is a mechical disc as opposed to an SSD, it could mean that it need defragging. Some systems defrag automatically nowadays but, if yours doesn't, a badly fragmented disc will slow down reading and writing to it.

[Grandpappy]

That's a useful answer. dhg481--My main disc is my C drive-an SSD of480GB (with about 90GB on it)& my internal disc is my E drive-a SATA of 1TB. All of my progs are on my C drive & my other stuff is on my E drive with about 800GB on it!
I'm going to try using a stick in my USB & see if that has an effect!
Will report back. Cheers

[bhg481]

If the files you want to "attach" are on your E drive it could be a fragmentation problem or even a problem developing with that disc. It would be an interesting experiment to copy the files onto your C drive and then test the mail-speed from there.
There is a reasonable amount of free space on your E drive so it might be worth forcing a defrag on it.
Another thing I would do is error-check your E drive (tick both options) and see if that improves things. It's not a bad thing to do anyway; it will take a fair time on a 1GB disc but it's a background task so it won't stop you using the computer.

[Grandpappy]

Thanks again bhg481.
I shall certainly run some tests on the 1TB 'E' drive, one of which will be your recommendation?
I tried the memory stick ,didn't seem to make any difference,so I'm inclined to suspect the internal drive??
Cheers

[bhg481]

It sounds like it could be a bad sector on your E drive - the system could be trying and re-trying to read data from that sector. Discs are always supplied with spare sectors; if you tick the "scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" option, the bad sector will be read and its data copied onto one of the spare sectors, which will then replace the bad sector.

[drmorgans]

If other people connected to your cabinet are using the web extensively than it could be your copper-wire connection has hit its limit. Does the upload time vary through the day?

[ChuckFickens]

I've had similar reports from about 70% of the staff I support from my work....

The local internet in a lot of places is just simply slow at the moment. Local cabinets and exchanges are suddenly hugely overloaded due to a unprecedented amount of people working from home, it's noticeable in both video and audio calls I have with staff on a daily basis all over the world.

The backbone of the internet is still fine, but the local parts of it are being pushed to the limits and it is showing up as speed problems.

[ChuckFickens]

And.... If you're only getting 0.84 upload (which is slow to start with) it's not going to take a huge percentage reduction in speed to be really noticeable!

[Grandpappy]

Well! To both bhg481 & ChuckFickens ,Thanks to all who have subscribed to this matter-much appreciated! With the 'lockdown' -(for lockdown) read - quarantine,I have lot's of time so out of curiosity I did a "chkdsk E: /r " and several hours later - nothing!!
So I think I'll get my ORIC out of the loft & wind it up!!
Stay safe.

[bhg481]

It sounds like you ran the disc check using the Command Prompt, rather than via Microsoft menus. If that's the case I assume you opened the Command Prompt in Administrator mode. The process will take a long time (several hours) but you should see things changing in the Command Prompt window.

[Grandpappy]

Yes,bhg481,it was done in Command Prompt,but I must admit I didn't sit and watch over hours! Just moved the mouse and saw a blank screen-I had looked once or twice earlier ( 1st. time-stage 4 'looking for bad clusters in user file data') (2nd.time-stage 5 'looking for bad,free clusters'-with a brain numbing figure-73479093-that's when the bottle of Balvenie called!

[alavahalf]

Ahh ! the call of the Balvenie, I've not heard that one.. is it similar to the call of the Glen Livet.

[bhg481]

If you've seen the Stage x messages then the test must have been completed successfully, which implies that there's no problems with the disc.
The only other suggestion I can make is to defrag the disc. I use a program "deflraggler", a free download from Piriform. I know there's a defraggler in Windows but I prefer the Piriform one.

[Grandpappy]

I shall defrag my E drive later and do try the Balvenie-keeps me sane & relaxed.
Stay safe.