Hi Russell, On 10/07/07, Russell McMahon wrote: > 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 would expect about 30-40 MB/s, but you're not copying it intelligently. Do you want to: - Backup the full 320GB on an equal filesystem? - Copy the 320GB to another disk, automatically defragmenting along the way, but to the same filesystem? - Copy the 320GB to another disk to another filesystem? If the second or third, you're using the right way. If you want to do the first (and if I understand this correctly, you do) you don't want a file-level copy but a disk-level copy. Try DD or something similar. DD is also available for windows with raw disk access. Alternatively, if you do want to do #2 or #3, try rebooting to Linux. It has a faster driver for most filesystems, although it disrecommends writing to NTFS (because it's mindbogglingly complex, undocumented and everchanging). Copying my 250GB disk to a pair of 250GB disks (all SATA) copied about 200GB of data in 2-4 hours. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist