Hard Drive Transfer Rates

[AlanHo]

I have been testing the hard drive data transfer rates on my computer by copying (using Explorer) two folders between drives and partitions.

Internal hard drives are 250 GB 7200 rpm SATA 300 with 16 MB memory

First drive with two equal partitions C: and D:

Second drive with two equal partitions E: and F:

External USB2 drive 250 GB SATA 7200 rpm 8 MB memory

The results are as follows - copying the folder from the D: internal drive

Copy a folder containing 16 video files total 2.52 GB from D: drive.

To External drive 1 min 44 secs - transfer rate 24.2 MBps

To C: drive on same hard disk 1 min 25 secs - transfer rate 29.6 MBps

To E: drive (different disk) 0 min 46 secs - transfer rate 54.8 MBps

To seperate folder on same partition 1 min 25 secs - transfer rate 29.6 MBps

Copy a folder containing 701 files total 1.04 GB from D: drive

To External drive 0 min 50 secs - transfer rate 20.8 MBps

To C: drive on same hard disk 0 min 49 secs - transfer rate 21.2 MBps

To E: drive (different disk) 0 min 22 secs - transfer rate 47.3 MBps

To seperate folder on same partition 0 min 47 secs - transfer rate 22.1 MBps

I also tested the transfer rate using a USB2 flash drive plugged into a socket on the motherboard - the transfer rate was a measly 0.74 MBps

My computer is set up with the OS and all programmes on the C: drive and all the data files (Documents, Pictures, Videos etc) on the D: drive - which is on the same hard disk.

My E: drive is used for Acronis backups of the C drive and my F: drive for Second Copy backups of all data.

It is clear from my tests that data transfer is faster when moving files from one hard drive to another - it is twice as fast as moving data between partitions on the same drive.

Does this mean that I would be better to reorganise the computer so that the OS and programmes are on a separate hard disc to the one storing Documents and data files...?

How is your computer set up in this regard - and why ...?

[-pops-]

I think part of the answer to this is that moving data from one folder of partition on the same drive doesn't involve the actual movement of data but rather re-labelling the data that is already there to fool the computer that it has been moved - seems it is a long and involved process. Moving data from one physical drive to a different one does involve the real transfer of data which the computer can achieve at something approaching the true data transfer rate of the drives involved.

Does that make sense?

What I tend to do is have the O/S and programs on my "C" drive. The data resulting from using whatever is on the "C" drive is stored on a different one. There is a Second Copy backup of all things changeable and that is kept on a separate drive. I also keep a backup of my whole systems on yet another drive.

[AlanHo]

I have just been doing some experiments taking Acronis backups to various drives.

I have an external Hard drive which can be connected by either USB2 or by SATA. Until now I have always used USB2 but my latest computer has an external SATA port - so today I obtained a SATA cable and tried it for the first time. Initially, the computer did not find the SATA ext. drive - until I rebooted the computer with the drive attached. It then installed the necessary files and the drive appeared in Explorer.

I backed up my C: (OS and programmes) drive and D:(all data) drive and compared the times.

Backing up to the external drive using USB took 58 minutes.

Backing up to the external drive using SATA took 21 minutes.

Backing up to a SATA internal hard drive took 20 minutes.

In each case the backup.tib file is 66.7 GB

Hence from now on I shall use the SATA cable for the external drive.