Acceptable transfer rate for WD my passport ultra 2TB drive?

martin57

Hi folks,


What is the usual transfer rate for data from a computer internal drive to an external WD my passport ultra portable drive?


Just received mine today and transferring rate started off at 90 mb per sec but then settled down at 26.1 mb per sec.


My computer is a quad core four year old Pc specialist machine.


Thanks
Martin57

Avoriaz

How is it connected?

USB2, USB3, eSATA etc.

26.1 mb per sec is about what I get with USB2.

USB3 or eSATA should be a lot faster.

The speed will also vary depending on whether you are transferring a few large files (faster) or a lot of smaller files (slower).

securityguy

martin57 wrote: »

My computer is a quad core four year old

Hence USB2. The fastest possible in theory would be 60MB/sec (480Mbps) but in practice there's a lot of overhead and USB2 is hardly well suited for fast disk transfer. So what you're getting is probably about right.

martin57

Yes its USB2. Just wondering is there a way to put in a pc card that would take it up to (is it USB 3 speeds) and if possible what could I expect then?


Many thanks
Martin57

espresso

martin57 wrote: »

Yes its USB2. Just wondering is there a way to put in a pc card that would take it up to (is it USB 3 speeds) and if possible what could I expect then?


Many thanks
Martin57

Example USB3 PCI card here

It would be considerably faster than USB2 transfers.

Real world transfer tests here

martin57

Thank you for that. I take it that any hubs I connect to the usb ports on those cards would need to be usb3 as well? I do have quite a few things hooked up to computer by cheap hubs.


many thanks
martin57

espresso

martin57 wrote: »

Thank you for that. I take it that any hubs I connect to the usb ports on those cards would need to be usb3 as well? I do have quite a few things hooked up to computer by cheap hubs.


many thanks
martin57

You only need USB3 ports to connect to USB3 devices like your new WD USB3 drive to gain the speed advantage. The older USB2 stuff can be left connected as it is now.

Avoriaz

Do you really need the faster speed?

My laptop is about four years old and has USB2 and eSATA ports for external disks.

I have a few 1tb 2.5 inch external disks in USB2 enclosures similar to yours.

I could remove the disks from the USB enclosure and put them in an eSATA enclosure that I use for my 3.5 inch disks but I usually don't bother.

It is so much easier to plug the enclosure into a USB2 port that also powers the disk rather than faff around with my eSATA enclosure that needs a separate power supply.

It doesn't bother me that it takes 30 minutes to do a backup rather than maybe 15 minutes. I just leave it chugging away until it is finished.

Unless you are regularly doing large volume backups I wouldn't bother spending money on speeding things up.

poppellerant

Avoriaz, I think your point is that you have to mess about to get fast speeds which isn't worth the it takes to do. Assuming 30MB/sec for 30 minutes, you're only transferring around 52GB - the OP has a 2TB harddrive, which about 1.8TB when formatted. It would take around 17 hours with a USB 2.0 port to fill the OP's drive up.

Assuming the drive can write constantly at about 125MB/sec with a USB 3.0 port, it would only take about 4 hours to fill the drive. Let's be generous and give the OP a full hour to install the USB 3.0 card - they have still saved time!

martin57

Thanks for replies again. I do regular acronis backups so a few bigger than 50gb, as well as storing them on a separate data drive on my computer I want to back them up to the WD portable drive as well. Can take some time as sometimes I am transferring up to 100gb.


Just another question if I may, since I have a few usb ports at front of computer is it at all possible to get one of those usb3 cards that will have an extra connection so that I could get the front ports of computer to work with usb3 as well? Probably not.


Many thanks once again for all your kind help.
martin57

closed

how often does anyone fill a drive, and have to watch it.

you may find usb3 isn't as fast as you expect.