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Archive 2014 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

paulsha911
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

Hi:

I recently tried using an external USB 3.0 drive and found that it's extremely slow copying files from a Thunderbolt to a USB 3.0 drive.

Does anyone have experience with this? Is it faster is I stay within the same bus? i.e. Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt, and USB3 to USB3?

Just determining whether I should keep investing in more Thunderbolt drives? or start switching to USB 3.0? If it's faster doing USB3.0 to USB3.0 file transfers, I can just buy a couple more USB hard drive docks and it'll be a lot cheaper to keep buying more Thunderbolt docks and cables.

Thoughts?

Paul

Sep 04, 2014 at 01:45 PM

colinm
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

There shouldn't be an appreciable speed difference between those two buses for a simple magnetic drive, assuming the drive enclosure is using a quality chipset.

If you're seeing a speed difference moving files between the two, that's really going to come down to either the drive in the USB 3.0 enclosure being slow or the USB bridge in the USB 3.0 enclosure being crap. It could also potentially be a bad cable, but usually by the time a cable's bad enough to severely impact speed, you're having other symptoms along with it.

Alternate option: Are you sure your computer and the specific port you're using supports USB 3.0? If it doesn't, you're falling back to USB 2.0, which, yes, will be painfully and mind-blowingly slower than a Thunderbolt drive.

Sep 04, 2014 at 02:28 PM

Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

what format are you transfering from and to ?

quite a while ago I was perplexed why it took so long to copy my 80gb+ smart preview file (cant remember the exact size) from my imac to my usb3 SSD drive .

so I copied the same file across 3 times using different drive formats . I formatted the drive on the mac after each go . the results were :

mac format = 4m25sec
fat = 22 mins
exFat = 51m 30sec

the drive was the same drive , connected to the same port and the data was comming off my mac from the same place (in fact as I run a fusion drive in theory the last format which was exfat should have been the fastest because fusion would have registered the file as a higher use file and given it priority in the SSD portion of fusion )

now as I run a win laptop (and Ive not had much luck with the mac format on win 8 utilities ive tried) im pretty much stuck using the slower formats (but at least i know what to expect )

the thing is when I run all 3 formats thru the black magic speed test i get pretty much the same results for each . and copying much smaller files I get no difference either .

Sep 04, 2014 at 05:58 PM

paulsha911
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

Colin, I was copying from a Thunderbolt hard drive to a USB 3.0 hard drive connected to a Mac Mini USB 3.0 port. It was really slow. Copy from my internal hard drive to USB 3.0 was at least twice faster and about the same speed as I copy from internal hard drove to Thunderbolt. I think all 4 USB ports on the Mac Mini is USB 3.0? I even double checked the system info.

Anyhow, I ordered another USB 3.0 stock and will try copying from USB to USB, and see if the bottle neck is when the data crosses Thunderbolt and USB buses?

Ian, yes, I tried exFAT at first on the USB drive and it was super slow. I changed it to Mac Journaled and I found copy from internal to external is about the same speed between Thunderbolt and USB 3.0.

Thanks!

Paul

Sep 05, 2014 at 12:50 AM

15Bit
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

I've actually experienced similar slowdowns when transferring from a gigabit network connection to a fast USB3 stick. Tested individually the two drives gave >90MB/sec to/from the local hard disk (SSD), but copying from the network to the memory stick i got something like 5-10MB/sec. It was actually faster to copy to the internal drive and then out again.

I got the same result from both my laptop and a Dell Xeon workstation so i can only conclude that there can be serious overheads when transferring between different buses and protocols (or perhaps just USB3?). Maybe you are seeing the same.

Sep 05, 2014 at 03:12 PM

Paul Mo
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

15Bit wrote:
...a fast USB3 stick.

Isn't that an oxymoron?

Sep 06, 2014 at 04:53 AM

15Bit
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

Paul Mo wrote:
Isn't that an oxymoron?

In the main, yes it is.

Sick of carrying around half a dozen 2 - 8GB sticks and waiting forever for transfers, I got one of these (http://www.sandisk.com/products/usb/drives/extreme/) a few months back, and whilst it doesn't hit the speeds they claim it is good for a sustained 90MB/sec.

Sep 06, 2014 at 05:01 AM

Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

Paul Mo wrote:
Isn't that an oxymoron?

no if you get a good one

http://usb.userbenchmark.com/Lexar-JumpDrive-P10-USB-30-32GB/Rating/1476

Sep 06, 2014 at 05:28 AM

Alan321
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

Ian.Dobinson wrote:
... quite a while ago I was perplexed why it took so long to copy my 80gb+ smart preview file (cant remember the exact size) from my imac to my usb3 SSD drive .

so I copied the same file across 3 times using different drive formats . I formatted the drive on the mac after each go . the results were :

mac format = 4m25sec
fat = 22 mins
exFat = 51m 30sec

Hi Ian. Did you by any chance time the transfer using the NTFS format ?
- Alan

Sep 07, 2014 at 04:38 AM

Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

Alan321 wrote:
Hi Ian. Did you by any chance time the transfer using the NTFS format ?
- Alan

Alan , No not yet . Ive not got myself the utility that allows OSX to write NTFS (maybe apple will include it at some point soon having just got round to allowing read of NTFS) .

Like I said I didn't have much joy with the windows HFS utility so I'm loath to try the other way just yet .

But yes it would be interesting .

In fact I'm seriously considering wing this win8 cr@p off the surface and having a go with OSX on it . If I could justify getting a MacBook air I would

as I've come to the conclusion that LR is not good on the 10" screen of the surface and that I HATE WINDOWS 8 in desktop mode

I know many can't stand the metro interface but I actually don't mind that , it seems to suit the surface well and works well for the things that happen in metro . But the fact that win 8 seems to act like its a dual boot machine and that desktop mode is the poor relation in family is just a joke .

Sep 07, 2014 at 01:08 PM

Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Thunderbolt USB 3.0 - Moving files between external drives

Alan321 wrote:
Hi Ian. Did you by any chance time the transfer using the NTFS format ?
- Alan

OK Alan (and anyone else interested) i retested adding in NTFS .

first let me say I must have got the file size wrong in the above example . it was a while ago and i remember at the time I was trying to work out a way of getting the smart preview onto an external drive and I remember being frustrated at the time it took . but I must have been testing a smaller smart preview file .

anyway :

I downloaded a trial of an NTFS utility for OSX . i tried Paragon but must have used the trial before as it wouldnt let me . so i found one called TUXERA NTFS. (i have no clue if its a good one but it did work. ) .
The 128gb SSD USB3 drive was reformatted after each transfer on my mac other than the NTFS format which I did on the Surface Pro (I figured better to use win to format NTFS)

Also I started with the HFS+ format to try and not adavntage it by the mac having the files in the faster part of my Fusion drive for the later transfers.

Test 1 . 15gig folder containing raw files from my 5D3

HFS+ - 3min 22sec
NTFS - 3min 25sec
EXFAT - 3min 27sec
FAT32 - 3min 29sec

so it seems times are pretty close . I was timing on my iphone so I'll admit they are not fully accurate given my old gits reaction time

. but my reactions arent that slow for the 7 second spread between fastest and slowest .

But I guess it would take a larg amount of raw files for it to make a huge difference .

Test 2 . 12gig folder conating smart preview file from lightroom . this file (which looks like 1 file in Mac but a load of folders on a PC) contains loads of small DNG files

HFS+ 3min 34sec
FAT32 11min 38sec
NTFS 12min 14sec
EXfat - I gave up ! snails could have gone quicker

. seriously , the estimate was 28mins (the estimate for the others was usually a tad quick so i'll assume it would been longer) and after 2mins it had written 800mb !

make of the above what you will , but it does seem that (on a mac at least) Mac format is quicker (dont know if im surprised by that

)

If I get a chance and can get a mac format utility for win downloaded I'll give the same files a go on my surface pro

Sep 08, 2014 at 09:02 AM


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