3.0 USB External

pparks1 said:

Is your Macrium image file itself 49GB in size...or was the amount of installed stuff on your hard drive around 49GB that you were imaging?

That is a good question. But even compressed it would still be appr. 27GB - and 9 min is fast for that too. My 23GB (image size) need 19 min with my bum enclosure and a 5400 RPM disk.

pparks1 said:

Copy the image file to your C drive. Then reboot your machine and time how long it takes to copy the file back. This will give you a good indication of how well your USB 3.0 is performing. If you get more than 25MB/sec....then you are doing better than USB 2.0

I have achieved over 40mb/sec sustained on usb 2.0...
...am I magic?

If you really want to know, download HD Tune and run the performance test. If the resulting curve starts out high on the outer part of the platter and gradually drops down as it approaches the inner platter, then you are being limited by your hard drive and not USB. If the curve is flat then you are being limited by USB. See Below with a cheap 2.5" drive in an external USB3.0 enclosure. The first is connected to a USB3.0 port and the second to a USB 2.0 port. You can see where the USB2.0 chops the transfer speed.

Also notice that my 2.5" HDD is going at full rate on the USB3.0, but it is only averaging 35 MB/s across the disk. The 2.5" drive is just that slow.

Well, the max speed of the USB 2.0 spec is 480Mbps. This comes out to roughly 60MB/sec....as a theoretical max. Because of overhead and such, the bus cannot reach maximum speed, but instead tops out around 40MB/sec. So, it's possible under the right circumstances that a drive could reach this max limit. But most drives and devices I have seen and read about, run between 25-30MB/sec most of the time.

Maguscreed said:

pparks1 said:

Copy the image file to your C drive. Then reboot your machine and time how long it takes to copy the file back. This will give you a good indication of how well your USB 3.0 is performing. If you get more than 25MB/sec....then you are doing better than USB 2.0

I have achieved over 40mb/sec sustained on usb 2.0...
...am I magic?

If that was Mb. it would be low - but if it was MB, it would be high. I get about 250Mb/sec on USB3 and eSata (which is low) and 450Mb/sec imaging to an internal disk. And that is all from an SSD to a spinning disk. The speed depends a lot on the speed and buffer of the disk itself, not only the data bus.

yeah, I always use MegaByte, not Megabit as my standard, as most people seem to have little clue what a megabit is...
The same drive that does that rate on this machine only manages around 25-30 on the machine in the den though. Same cable and all. eSATA is definitely noticeably faster but I can't get it working right with win 7.
I think it's just my motherboard that's becoming dated. Wouldn't have proper drivers for it at all if it wasn't nforce.

Have been working a lot of lates so late reply.

Now I am going to show my ignorance am not that savvy looked up a Macrium is it soe sort of app for backing up that eveyrone s refering to?

Secondly have just tried another backup, system image, and copy C: psate E: (ext) and the times are all about the same approx 7 - 9 mins <> fewsecs.

My original 49Gb is 24Gb according to the backup images.

I might do a few pics and see what you fellows can make of them because I'm sure that there is WD software on the external from new and perhaps the image is just the difference though 25Gb for the drive set up sofware does seem to be excessive.

Looking at the C: drive it has 884 free of 931 = ?47Gb used space ?

E; is showing 409 free of of 465Gb = 56Gb used space (two backups and one system image including the onboard WD software. So 9Gb is a backup, the onboard WD software, and the rest system image?

Sorry to you blokes but I am totally confused now as to what is happening.

To answer your questions:

1. yes, Macrium is an imaging program. More here: Imaging with free Macrium

2. images are usually compressed. The resulting image can be 40 to 60% smaller than the originating data.

3. your disk capacity calculations look about right. But you can also look at the Properties of every record on E (images are records too) and it will show you the size.