External HD speeds

[ChiefLee]

I would assume you could buy a USB 2 card for your computer if you have a slot? Most cards like this are pretty easy to install. And would likely increase your speed quite a bit.

[Soquili]

Hi ChiefLee,

Installing a USB 2.0 card is easy enough however depending on the age of the computer the bus speed may not be adaquate to support the speed for the data transfer.

I put a USB 2.0 card into a 900MHz AMD Athlon machine a few years ago. The bus speed wasn't fast enough to allow true 2.0 data throughput.

True USB 2.0 devices complained and did not like to play well with the USB card.

[Burpee]

That's a great idea. I'm out today to the dentist so I'll stop by a store or two and see what they offer. As long as the memory needed for transfering doesn't pose a problem it might work.

I found that if I am transfering from my cpu C drive to the new external, it transfers much faster than external to external but it still took 40 minutes to transfer 1.64GB (many folders in the transfer).

Someone suggested taking both externals to a Staples or Best Buy and paying them to transfer the information. I'd never heard of such a thing before and hesitate to do it.

[steve.ledger]

Also remember that USB 2 support was not available in Windows versions until XP Service pack 1.

[handrawn]

Hi Nancy

looks like you are getting there slowly

just for the comparison I have just shifted 21.5 GB from exHDD to internal IDE HDD [32,159 files - 1407 folders] and it took 19.5 minutes on USB 2 [at the speed steve quoted - there are two options in the BIOS for USB 2]

[just been fitting a new sata disk]

best of luck

[Burpee]

I am getting there indeed. I am slowly transferring files and it's going alot faster than yesterday. This Toshiba is SATA ready but I don't even know what that is and I'm sure I won't be using it.

What helps the transfer speed is not having folders within folders. It takes less time to move a 1GB folder with just jpgs in it than to move a 400MB folder with numerous folders inside of it. If there's lots of folders inside a folder I need to move, then I move two at a time, each running on it's own copy command.

The main problem with the new Toshiba ExHD is when it goes into sleep mode (5 minutes of inactivity), it takes more than a moment to awaken it while Windows flashes that little flashlight icon looking for the files.

So far I have all my image files and artwork moved over, I have all my photographs copied and almost all my 3D objects I've made in Hexagon and C4D. I have alot of resource folders to copy and anything that I put on disc (which is alot) and I think I'll grab my PSP plugins too.

I'd use the backup software that came with the Toshiba but I'm afraid it would take a full week of 24/7 to get it to finish....though I did install it.