Ext USB Drive Copy Times

[linw]

Been doing some copy comparisons between a 3.5 ext 2TB USB2 drive and a 2.5 ext 1TB USB3 drive using USB 3 and USB 2 ports. Comp is a I5 system on Win 10.

One finding is that copying large files is way quicker than copying small files (same overall size of copy). This is pretty well known but is still interesting to see by how much. Large file copies run at peak speed while small ones vary from 0.5 MBs to peak.

Another finding is that if you have a USB2 drive and have USB3 computer ports, you should always use the USB3 ports as it speeds up the transfer by quite a bit. For example, USB2 to USB2 port took 225 sec while USB2 to USB3 port took 152 sec for same 5.2GB large file copy.

Matching the USB3 drive to the USB2 port took 197 sec while USB3 to USB3 port took 76 sec.

Peak transfer speeds here were 92 MBs USB3 to USB3, 28 MBs USB2 to USB2, and 40 MBs USB2 drv to USB3 port.

Thought it might be of interest to some of you. I will always use the USB3 port from now on!

[dugimodo]

Similarly if you buy Flash drives for transporting large files regularly get a USB 3.0 drive even if you only have USB 2.0. I have a range of flash drives and none of the USB 2.0 ones come anywhere near the theoretical max speed with many writing at 5-15 MBps Whereas even my cheap "slow" USB 3.0 16GB flash drive manages 20-30 MBps over USB 2.0 and 40-50 over USB 3.0.

I have an older 32GB one I bought ages ago that maxes out USB 2.0 in the low 30's and goes 70+ over USB 3.0. There are fast USB 2.0 drives but they are costly and old technology. Good drives generally specify transfer rates whereas cheaper ones often don't, probably because it's pretty slow. Using windows reported transfer speeds in Bytes for my numbers.

[Speedy Gonzales]

The Apacer AH 552 I brought from Pbtech isnt too bad (32 GB). The older flash drive only copies @ 15-16. The AH552 copies at 26/27 on a USB 2 port. And around 40+ on a USB 3 port

[Kame]

I always break external drives out of their cases and do copying via SATA, then just put it back together.

USB is trying to survive, Apple trying to change standards again, Firewire failed and they got Thunder or Lightning that they are trying.

The speeds are no good, maybe external SATA ports could be better, but still, we will always want standard and fast.

Cheers,

KK

[gary67]

I always break external drives out of their cases and do copying via SATA, then just put it back together.

USB is trying to survive, Apple trying to change standards again, Firewire failed and they got Thunder or Lightning that they are trying.

The speeds are no good, maybe external SATA ports could be better, but still, we will always want standard and fast.

Cheers,

KK

eSATA already exists I have it on my desktop

[dugimodo]

USB 3.0 is faster than current mechanical hard drives so it it's a great option. eSATA never really worked properly for me but the speeds are good, I just had issues with being able to safely remove eSATA drives on many machines. Newer BIOSes handle it better but I'm not sure how many users want to go into the BIOS and configure SATA ports for removable drives. Either is fast enough that removing the drive from the case is unnecessary.

A while back I put a spare 120GB SSD into a UBS 3.0 enclosure, it was so fast I was hampered by the read speed of the internal data drive and to test it fully I had to copy some data onto my internal SSD to use as a source. It is an old intel 320 SSD and managed sustained write speeds over USB of 120+ MB/s with bursts over 200 and copying in the other direction managed 200-250MB/s to my Samsung 830 evo. These are close to the maximum rated speeds for the drive. Seemed a waste though so I re-used it as a boot drive for another machine.

[Kame]

eSata is a combination sata/USB port, unfortunately majority of them only supplied the 5v when a lot of sata devices required 12v. Won't be made standard because the guys at USB do not support a multitype port.

But I was referring to getting a standard port type, since de factos pave the way and there's been a lot of ports come and go, due to not taking off and surviving.

Cheers,

KK

[dugimodo]

eSATA has nothing to do with USB . It's a connector/cable standard for SATA to be used outside the case but is the same as SATA internally. http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-esata.htm It also does not supply power.
The eSATAp standard adds USB and power to it as a combo port and is probably what you are referring to. eSATAp however is uncommon, I've never seen it but I've had many machines with eSATA. I don't think it's a standard that will survive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESATAp

With USB 3.0 becoming common and 3.1 about to start showing up on devices eSATA has little or no use any more.