I'm copying data from an almost full 320 GB Seagate SATA drive to a 
320GB WD SATA drive. WD is new. Seagate has been extensively used. 
Processor is Pentium D (dual core) 2.8 GHz, 1 GB RAM. Both drives are 
NTFS. Transfer is using XXCOPY in a DOS box, which is usually about as 
fast as any other means. [[I avoid Windows basic copy as its not easy 
to restart in the middle if it crashes out and such a large transfer 
always crashes out for any number of inadequate reasons. No doubt 
there are Windows level utilities that do this with proper resume.]]. 
Motherboard has 4 x SATA ports and there are 4 x 320 GB drives on the 
system (including the above 2) plus an 80 GB IDE drive. No other user 
activity is taking place. PC is LAN connected. Not acting as a server 
or being accessed on the LAN.

What sort of data transfer rate would people expect?

I'm getting something around 2.5 to 3 MB/second (won't know for sure 
until finished). This seems far too slow. It's been running for about 
24 hours now and it is almost complete. Setting task priority high 
didn't seem to help. Neither did playing with affinity for other 
tasks. I've shut down all tasks that are obviously unnecessary and no 
other applications are running.



            Russell


-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist