Question fastest way to copy 3tb of data to a new drive

[merk]

Hi All,

I've currently got EaseUS todo backup cloning a 4tb drive to a 6tb drive. There's about 3tb worth of data on the 4tb drive. 6tb is brand new and nothing on it.

4tb should have a sustained transfer rate of about 150MB/s and the 6tb drive has about the same speed for sustained write. Both drives are plugged into sata6 ports. Currently it's been running for 11.5 hours and says it's 82% complete with 2.5 hours to go.

With those speeds, shouldn't this take about 6 hours?

4tb drive is ST4000DM000
6tb drive is HDWE160XZSTA

 

[alexruiz]

The ~150MB/s figure is good only on sequential transfers.
The little files are killing the transfer speed.

The X300 is a great drive btw, I think you will be happy with it.

 

[merk]

It finally finished, took 12.5 hours total. So you think that's a reasonable time for 3tb worth of data? I dont suppose it would have been any faster just copying the files through windows? I don't think I really needed to clone it since it's just a bunch of games and media files mostly. But i assumed cloning would be the fastest and safest way to go.

Thanks

 

[Furious_Styles]

It finally finished, took 12.5 hours total. So you think that's a reasonable time for 3tb worth of data? I dont suppose it would have been any faster just copying the files through windows? I don't think I really needed to clone it since it's just a bunch of games and media files mostly. But i assumed cloning would be the fastest and safest way to go.

Thanks

Who knows if it would be faster. The previous poster is right though all those small files will slow it to a crawl. If it was just big files like movies it would take closer to the 6 hour estimate.

 

[merk]

I just realized something... When you clone a HD, doesn't it just copy it bit by bit? In which case the number or size of the files shouldn't matter right?

 

[Billy Tallis]

When you clone a HD, doesn't it just copy it bit by bit?

Some cloning tools actually parse the filesystem in order to not waste time copying empty space. This is preferable when your drive is mostly empty or has low fragmentation or when the destination is an SSD, but the extra reads required can be a problem on a drive full of small or fragmented files. It also helps when cloning to a drive with a different total capacity, as partitions can be expanded or shrunk to fit the destination disk.

 

[rsutoratosu]

I dont think I ever clone a 2-3tb drive.

I have cloned a 1.5 tb to a 2tb that had read errors on source, that took over 11 hours on retry and I think about 3-4 on ignore read errors.