Vince Pachiano
October 16th, 2014, 08:39 AM
I want to copy 2 terabytes of data from a 2 external 1TB Hdd's to a single 2TB external HDD.
I'd like to use an old laptop so it doesn't tie-up my main desktop
Where is my bottleneck?
USB 2.0 Speed
Speed of the external HDD
Processor of the laptop?
This isn't something I do on a regular basis, so if it takes 24 hours, it takes 24 hours.
Jeff Pulera
October 16th, 2014, 11:59 AM
USB 2.0 would be the main issue constraining throughput.
Andrew Smith
October 25th, 2014, 01:41 PM
Definitely the USB2 connection.
If you have USB3 connections on a computer, purchase a USB3 (or eSATA etc) hard drive dock. Then dismantle the USB2 external hard drives and physically transfer them to the USB3 dock(s) ... achieving a 5x speed boost for that device.
Andrew
Chris Medico
October 25th, 2014, 02:50 PM
+1 - USB2.0 is the bottleneck in that list.
Jordan Nash
October 26th, 2014, 02:17 PM
If it's a 3.5 inch external drive, it probably has a SATA drive inside. Disassemble the external drive and plug it into your desktop computer directly (skip the laptop). This will let the drives talk to each other directly on the SATA bus and will bypass the CPU-bound USB bus.
Retain the chassis from the external drives; you never know when you might need a SATA to USB interface.