Data Transfer Calculation

[MrMet]

Dont know if this is the right forum but here it goes. Set up a new computer and wanna be sure everythings ok. Now I have an external HD that I am trying to transfer 16gigs to new machine. New comp is a e6400 with a gigabite ds3 mobo and 2 gigs of ddr2. New HD in computer is connected to the SATA 2. Using USB2 to transfer the 16 gigs to new computer how long would u estimate it would take. It's telling me about 4 hours. Now would I be better off zipping up the folder and then transfering. Is it possible to zip a folder of this size. Mostly mp3's and video. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[silverpig]

You probably wouldn't gain much by using .zip.

Pros:
Transfer a single file instead of many smaller ones (starting/stopping each file takes a lot of time)
That is all.

Cons:
Time to zip.
Time to unzip.

You don't gain much at all in size reduction as mp3s are almost uncompressible (try zipping up an mp3 to see how much you gain). The videos will be similar. All in all it's just a waste of time. Just let it finish on its own

 

[MrMet]

My big question is does that seem about right. 4 hours to transfer 16 gigs using usb2. I'm a dope when it comes to these calculations. Just wanna make sure all settings are correct on new machine

 

[alzan]

4 hours for 16 GBs over USB2 does sound right; I do a lot of these and larger transfers at work on a daily basis.

 

[MrMet]

Thanks, seemed a little long but just wanted to be sure

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: MrMet
Thanks, seemed a little long but just wanted to be sure

FOUR HOURS? Yes, that's way too long for USB2/FW.

USB2 is at best 480Mbps, which is ~60MB/sec. Now, in practice, you're likely to get less than that with an external drive, especially transferring many many small files -- maybe 30MB/sec at best.

You're transferring 16,000 MB at 30MB/sec. 16,000 / 30 = 533 seconds, or about 8 minutes. 4 hours is WAY too long; you're probably running at USB1 speed. Four hours is 14,400 seconds -- that's about 1MBps, or right around USB1 speed of 10Mbps.

I just tried copying 2400MB of data off an external USB2 hard drive to a 7200RPM SATA drive. It took 1m54sec (114 seconds).

2400/114 = 21MB/sec.

 

[rambow]

copied my ~20gigs of music from my mp3 player to my freshly formatted hdd via usb2.0 yesterday. took more than 15min but less than 20.