Transfer rates from Disk to disk and usb?

[Sagath]

Tried googlin' it up, but couldnt find much with 'modern' computers and hard drives only old ide and the like . What kind of speeds are normal today for SATA drives in the following scenarios;

HDD to HDD?

HDD to USB and the reverse?

Assume bulk generic files. I know depending on the type of file this can change. Something like an entire installed game folder would be a good real world example I guess. I was getting about 50Mb/s when I moved my Steam folder from one drive to another.

[CMetaphor]

Not certain about HDD to HDD since there are several factors that could affect the speeds (afaik, even the sata controller could be a limiting factor in some cases). However, in the case of HDD to USB or vice versa, never expect great speeds... 50MB/s would be wishful thinking in this case, more likely you'll get 50Mb/s.

[TopDogZero]

I've noticed it really depends on what files your moving. I did some tests for an example but it's from an SATA raid (2x7200.10 Seagate's) to a WD 250GB IDE.

Ran tests 3 times each and took info only from Vista's file transfer status window.

Small files about 4MB's each jpeg's 2.7GB in total:
Seems the cache on the drives don't come too much in to play here as it starts off at around 35MB's/sec and averages 28MB's/sec

Ripper DVD in folder, files average between 300MB & 500MB 6GB total:
Seems the caches play a bigger role here and the file sizes too, starts at 80MB's/sec and averages 60MB's/sec

One 1.8GB .MKV file:
The cache play a huge role here with the single large file, starts at 170MB's/sec? and averages 70MB's/sec. About 25sec to copy.

As you can see the cache is playing a big role here along with file sizes, my raid0 in HDtune averages 130MB's raw and the WD 250 60Mb's. As you can see I'm getting the maximum speed from the large file transfers which is limited by the WD 250. I would think that the same would be true for you as the maximum speed of your drives would be reached when transferring large files, I'm guessing the Stream folder you moved had smaller files in it?

[Sagath]

Yeah, its "Steam". The utility used by valve to push all their games out and launch them, like Half-Life, GTA4, L4D, etc: www.steampowered.com

So, it was 28gb in size for the main folder. Contains 4 or 5 full games in there. Some large, lots of small files, I'm sure. I got 50MB/s. So 3 gigs a min to move them, give or take ~9 min to move the whole folder.

I really wasnt sure if that was normal. Like I said and CM reiterated, there is alot of factors that can affect it. But I figured there should be some kind of general "Oh crap, something is wrong" kind of area. Your quick check between the jpg's and DVD file seem consistant with the speed I got with the steam folder. Maybe I'll zip it up and try moving that to see if the cache comes into play a bit better.

Thank for the help guys.

[CMetaphor]

I'd actually be interested to see what the speed differences would be if the whole Steam folder is zipped. let us know!

[gingerbee]

hd to hd the bottle neck is the drives only. usb2.0 will never get more then 30mb/s

[DarKStar]

For HDD to HDD it will depend on the type and controller also keeping in mind that since you have one writing drive that will also limit the speed as writes are slower than reads. For HDD to USB it depends on your enclosure, chipset and speed - I use USB 2 capable HDD enclosures and the usb2 ones will do 30MB~35MB/s (megabytes)

[JimboToronto]

Originally Posted by gingerbee

hd to hd the bottle neck is the drives only. usb2.0 will never get more then 30mb/s

I agree. HDDs don't come near to saturating PATA133 or SATA2. The HDDs themselves are the bottleneck.