disc is bouba and disk is kiki

Writing speed starts out real fast then slows right down. Iotop says disk I/O is like 100% meanwhile write speed fluctuates between a few kilobytes per second and sometimes blazing along for a few seconds at 10 megabytes. At first I thought it was something to do with Samba, but even a disk to disk copy on the box does the same thing. So we're down to 'usb3 something' (don't think that's it) 'enclosure something' (maybe) or 'disk something' (yeahhhhhh my gut says that's it)

Which sucks! I haven't even filled up this disk yet! I'll find out tonight. I'd do it now but I started a big file copy and I wanna let it limp along to the finish line, and we gotta go to a party soon. I have a feeling I'll be buying another disk soon 🥲