Is this right?

Skeeter · 4 Jun 2008 at 11:10

Hi

Im replacing my 320GB HDD with a 500GB. The 320 has 2 partions on it, so ive created 2 partition on the 500 (only bigger) and set all the files to copy from each partition to there respective replacement. In all its about 300 gigs of Data as the old drive is full. So ive got 2 copying proccesses under way, from one HDD to the new one.

Thing is, I set it off at about midnight last night, and its still going. One partition says 106 mins remaining, and the other isnt even half way through the progress bar? Is it right to take over 12 hours to copy 300GB of data between 2 SATA HDDs, even if a lot of it is small files?

Jumping · 4 Jun 2008 at 11:20

I hope this is just pure data files and nothing to do with your OS as that will most likely fail the copy and kill your OS from working.

If I had to do that ammount of copying of data I would clone the old drive, then change partition sizes to what you want on the new drive. Doing it the clone way you would easily be done within 1h. Also cloning will be able to keep your OS fully functional on your new drive.

death_looms · 4 Jun 2008 at 11:45

From my experience, HDD's don't like more than one copying/moving/anything action at any one time, it takes a LOT longer than you would think! If you have to do it again, I would suggest doing it one after the other, but for 2 operations and that amount of data, it's not suprising me that it's taking that long.

Skeeter · 4 Jun 2008 at 11:49

I did clone the drive. well, the partitions. I used Partition Magic to copy them accross, but it failed saying there wasnt enough room in the partitions for the data (it was an exact copy of 2 partitions with a couple of gigs free each.... no, i didnt get it either). So I gave up, just created 2 partitions big enough for all the data and started them copying and left it overnight. I knew it would take a while, but 12 hours is a bit long.

Dont worry, its not my OS drive. Its my Data drive and my Games drive, neither of which are in use.

uv · 4 Jun 2008 at 12:26

I copied ~1.1TB from drives to drive the other day, and it took about 4 hours iirc*. Windows *really* doesn't deal well with parrallel transfers.. I'd stop one process, and just have one copy process at a time

*~140MB/s (2 drives copying to one at 70MB/s each)

Skeeter · 4 Jun 2008 at 12:33

Well one has finished now, and the other one has done over half in about 30 mins... so yeah, looks like Windows really does hate Parallell transfers! Ill do them one at a time next time.