Best way to copy 60gig to a USB stick?

tigerstyle

tigerstyle

tigerstyle

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I have to copy a folder (many folders contained within) that is approx 62gig to a 128gig USB3 stick.
The folder I'm copying contains about 30,000 sub folders each full of photos, so the total file count is near 1,000,000 (I think the pictures all have thumbnails too)

I currently have the original files on a HDD within an old i3 laptop. And it only has USB2.
Is the speed difference between USB2/3 important here, or are the many many small files ore of a CPU overhead than a disk transfer thing? The CPU load doesn't go up in

I originally copied the folder from our network onto the laptop via RichCopy utility, as this seemed the best way at the time, and that took a long time...

I'm using RichCopy to transfer from HDD to USB, but it seems to be taking a long time, 24 hours+ (I messed up once by telling it to copy to the wrong place so had to start it again)

The USB3 128gig stick is formatted to NTFS.

I didn't even try the windows copy, as it has no pause function, and I've never trusted it.

Ideas?

RichCopy: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2009.04.utilityspotlight.aspx
 
personally I'd use winrar, compress the files (store only) on your HD to a single file, then copy that file to your USB.

Copy the file from USB onto the HD then uncompress it. Would be faster copying one file than 30K + files.
 
The files must stay uncompressed on the USB as I need to give it to someone.
But thank you I can see how that would be quicker for a lot of tasks.
 
hornetstinger said:
personally I'd use winrar, compress the files (store only) on your HD to a single file, then copy that file to your USB.

Copy the file from USB onto the HD then uncompress it. Would be faster copying one file than 30K + files.
Click to expand...

This. Then unrar once it's on the stick if you need it uncompressed.

Also getting full USB3 speeds will make this a much less painful operation, USB2 will be almost glacial in comparison.
 
To add this into the mix, I can probably remove the HDD from the laptop, take it home and copy it onto an SSD in my home PC that has USB3 and do it that way.
Just can't quite get my head around the right order of operations!

Copy from HDD to SSD as 'raw' files
Then from SSD Copy to USB3 (via USB3)
No need to Zip the files that way as I'll have enough of a speed boost it won't matter?
Or is there enough space to send a ZIP of the files onto the USB3 stick and Unzip whilst on the stick too?
 
By the time you remove the drive, take it home, install it, and all that jazz, wouldnt it be just as quick to start a copy and leave it running where it is?

Code: 
C:\> XCOPY C:\*.* E:\ /s /e /c /d /r /h /y
And then go to the pub?
 
skyripper said:
By the time you remove the drive, take it home, install it, and all that jazz, wouldnt it be just as quick to start a copy and leave it running where it is?

Code: 
C:\> XCOPY C:\*.* E:\ /s /e /c /d /r /h /y
And then go to the pub?
Click to expand...

Thank you. Does this give any indication of time remaining or a current status?
 
tom_e said:
This. Then unrar once it's on the stick if you need it uncompressed.

Also getting full USB3 speeds will make this a much less painful operation, USB2 will be almost glacial in comparison.
Click to expand...

Do you know how slow it will be to extract a file from a 62gig rar that contains 1 million files! It will be slower than the copy and probably not even manage it and tell you to go away (not responding....)
Speaking from experience copying files to USB2 is like watching paint dry. Copying 1 million will be worse and yes it will take forever.
USB3 does help but even so due to the number of files it will be incredibly slow but then again if the laptop only has USB2 its going to use USB2 speeds.

You would be better off as you said copying the files from HDD to SSD, buy a 2.5" USB3 caddy for a tenner, stick SSD in and give that to whoever.
 
Always found copying 100's of gb's of data no problem just using Windows' native abilities, even when backing up a hdd to usb3 hdd. Pretty sure you can pause transfers nowadays too if you click 'more info'? Just as a precaution I'll leave the PC well alone while it does its thing though.
 
It's 2.07 million files


Thanks for the input so far, trying a few things now :)
I wanted to check there was nothing completely obvious I should have done to make it easy, I realise even trying anything via USB2 was silly now!
 
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