Data transfer speeds ?

[-Chris-]

Here's the scenario:
1 laptop Dell 6440, using the usb3 ports, has 8GB ram and is on Windows Professional 7 64-bit
1 External portable WD Passport Hard drive, 1TB, on NTFS, 900GB of all sorts of large and small files and folders - Source disk
1 External portable WD Passport Hard drive, 1TB, on NTFS, completely empty - Destination disk

Here's the problem:
The data transfer rates from the source disk to the destination disk, at the highest rate, is about 20MB/second. Forgetting about any 3rd party applications, any ideas on how to get that faster please?

 

[-Chris-]

Apologies, here's the updated:

Here's the scenario:
1 laptop Dell 6440, using the usb3 ports, has 8GB ram and is on Windows Professional 7 64-bit
1 External portable WD Passport Hard drive, 1TB, on NTFS, 900GB of all sorts of large and small files and folders - usb3 drive and usb3 cable - Source disk
1 External portable WD Passport Hard drive, 1TB, on NTFS, completely empty - usb3 drive and usb3 cable - Destination disk

Here's the problem:
The data transfer rates from the source disk to the destination disk, at the highest rate, is about 20MB/second. Forgetting about any 3rd party applications, any ideas on how to get that faster please?

 

[alzan]

Transfer speeds will vary based on the size of files being transferred; if your source drive is full of relatively small files (e.g. 1MB - 25MB) you're not going to get fast transfer speeds, if it's full of large files (75MB - 100MB) the transfer speed will be higher.

Also, using a GUI copy utility will be slower than using something like rsync.

For faster transfer you should look at an external drive with an eSATA port.

 

[-Chris-]

Thanks, but with the scenario above, surely it should be more than 20MB/second??

 

[alzan]

Thanks, but with the scenario above, surely it should be more than 20MB/second??

Not really. Despite the faster speed of USB3 it's still a bus protocol and CPU dependent as opposed to Firewire and AFAIK eSATA which are point-to-point (not CPU dependent).

 

[KillerBee]

Is there a difference in this thread vs your other thread ?
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2393421