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Thread ID: 142322 2016-06-11 02:37:00 Anyone know of a fast file copier? BBCmicro (15761) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
1421694 2016-06-11 02:37:00 I'm refreshing a bunch of 2TB external drives and it's taken 12 hours to do one of them using SyncBack

Does anyone know of other copying software that might work faster?

I know the drives are capable of faster than 45 MB/s. Have often seen 90 MB/s on big video files

(I'm not criticising SyncBack - it's great software)
BBCmicro (15761)
1421695 2016-06-11 03:30:00 Depends on how the drives are connected.

If they are both SATA, with one being blank, you can simply plug in the empty Drive to a SATA port, then use something like copy/cloning software.
Last time I did similar I used AOMEI Partition Assistant - just seleted the disk copy wizard

7239

Other times I have used TeraCopy or the inbuilt Robocopy function in Windows ( but with a GUI) going by the name of sourceforge.net (sourceforge.net)
wainuitech (129)
1421696 2016-06-11 04:41:00 The drives are connected via USB but that RoboMirror link looks promising

Unfortunately I've started another copy via SyncBack and it's going to take 12 hours so I'll try RoboMirror tomorrow

Looking at Windows' Resource Monitor there's quite a difference between the two drives in my current job. I don't know whether this is because one is reading (E) and the other writing (M), or whether it is due to the manufacture age. E was made in 2012, not long after USB3 got into full swing. M was made in 2014 and might have improved firmware. Both are WD My Passport 2TB USB3 (Passports not Elements)
BBCmicro (15761)
1421697 2016-06-11 07:35:00 You're sure they are both plugged into a USB 3 port ? 45MB/s is only just above typical USB 2.0 transfer speeds which is slightly suspicious. I have 3 2.5" USB 3.0 drives and they all manage to go over 90 most of the time I'm pretty sure but I only really use them to store a backup image of my C: drives so it's SATA -> USB 3.0. Even my older USB 3.0 flash drive manages 50-80

I've found robomirror to somehow be slower than robocopy which makes no sense at all because it's just a GUI for robocopy... but that's what I found. I assumed it was maybe using some different switches that were slowing things down. To sync my NAS and the Backup I just use a batch file along the lines of
Robocopy W: "F:\Downloads" /MIR /XA:SH /XD "$recycle.bin" /W:5 /R:5 I don't remember exactly what the switches do, it was a gradual process by trial and error until I got it working how I wanted. The recycle bin is excluded because it was trying to copy it and causing errors.

This particular command line makes a mirror copy of my mapped W: drive to the Downloads directory on my local F: drive, it only copies newer files and deletes any files in the target directory that don't exist in the source. Once I got it working right I used windows scheduler to run it weekly, there's a second similar line to backup the main folder to another directory as well.
dugimodo (138)
1421698 2016-06-11 10:42:00 When I've refreshed all the (older) drives I will have a spare one that I can experiment on... Thanks

After reading your post Dugi I looked at the SyncBack job and it was showing 76 Mbps. I have also seen it at 105 Mbps. So the ports seem OK. The 45 Mbps is an average for the entire session ie 2TB divided by 12 hours

One thing that puzzles me is that the reading and writing seemed to be interleaved and there are frequent periods were SyncBack reports 0 MBps. I would have thought that 16 GB of memory would allow a kind of buffer and give simultaneous disc access and continuous writing

Memory usage is quite high...
BBCmicro (15761)
1421699 2016-06-12 22:48:00 Could it be because it isnt doing a copy... its doing a sync: ie read & write (and compare) 1101 (13337)
1421700 2016-06-13 03:05:00 I chose Backup in SyncBack not Sync or Mirror all files. Backup sounds like Copy. The destination drives are newly formatted. I turned off the indexing of contents before using the drive

Sometimes the drive label I enter during the formatting changes back to the old one, causing a 'destination folder no longer available' message in Windows Explorer. Each time it happened the copying continued until the end of the file :confused: I changed to SyncBack to manage the fragments. I now eject the destination disc immediately after formatting, then re-acquire it. Seems to have solved that problem
BBCmicro (15761)
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