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Thread ID: 139136 2015-03-16 17:17:00 HDD Cloning bk T (215) Press F1
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1396530 2015-03-16 21:11:00 bk T, are you cloning or imaging? Did it actually take 11 hrs or did you stop it at the estimate? Sometimes the estimate gets revised down as the copy proceeds.

Yep, that USB 2 is a real bottleneck. Got a photographer's system here that has over 200GB of photos so imaging that system of 318GB total takes over 5 hrs.

Cloning that disk to a new one installed in the system box took about 1.5 hrs. BIG difference.

Big disks and USB 2 just don't go hand in hand, really, which is a worry for my photographer!

I'm cloning a 500GB system disk to another and it is still running - done only 181GB after 04:19 lapsed. I want to keep it running until it finishes - just want to see the actual results. After all, just left it there, doesn't need much attention, really. LOL
bk T (215)
1396531 2015-03-16 21:43:00 USB2 is just fine
USB3 is better but may not be any faster, depending on actual HD write speed

people are confusing interface speed with actuall HD write speed. They arnt the same.
Perhaps the USB socket you are plugging into is actually USB1, now that will be slow.

No we aren't. Hard drives are faster than USB 2.0. A slow hard drive is about 2-3 times faster writing than the maximum transfer speed of USB 2.0 which in practice seldom Exceeds 33MBps as opposed to mechanical hard drives which typically write in the range of 80-150 MBps. USB 3.0 however is much faster than mechanical hard drives and therefore will not bottleneck them.

Saying USB 3.0 will not be faster depending on HDD write speed is incorrect. It will be faster because hard drives write faster than USB 2.0 can handle. If you can find an ancient IDE drive and somehow connect it to a USB 3.0 interface then in that case you may experience no improvements over USB 2.0 but any modern hard drive is much faster than that. USB 1.1 on the other hand is so slow I'd expect transfer times in days not hours

TL;DR hard drives with a USB 2.0 connection are bottlenecked by the interface, USB 3.0 drives are bottlenecked by the drive speed
en.wikipedia.org
dugimodo (138)
1396532 2015-03-16 22:58:00 That tallies with my 1.5 hrs via internal SATA vs 5+ hrs via USB2. linw (53)
1396533 2015-03-17 07:42:00 At last, it took >11 hrs to finish the cloning, but only to get BSOD when trying to load Windows! What an experience! Will never do it again.

Luckily, I've got an Windows Image created, re-imaged it, which took <15 mins; Windows loads up without an issue.
bk T (215)
1396534 2015-03-17 07:53:00 Yep, thats why I mostly image these days, its quicker to make an image to a USB drive and image it back again to another drive than to clone -- Shouldn't be but thats the way it rolls usually :) wainuitech (129)
1396535 2015-03-19 10:54:00 www.makeuseof.com apsattv (7406)
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