A good backup speed? ... Prep to transfer data from 2016 15" MBP to 16"

[MareLuce]

In the 'a watched pot never boils' category...

Last night at midnight-ish I started backing up my almost nearly full 2TB 2016 15" MBP to transfer it to the new 16" 4TB.
I read in other threads very positive comments about Carbon Copy Cloner when transferring machines. Am taking the final backup with that. I have Time Machine backups too.

I haven't decided which to use for the transfer of user data to new MBP, Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner. I do want to reinstall my apps instead of transfer all my old ones. Want to get rid of the flotsam and jetsam and incompatible apps.

2 questions:
1) Is 81 GB / hour a good backup speed?
I'm using a Seagate 5TB Backup Plus external hard drive plugged into my laptop with a USB-C to disk drive cable like this one.

1.08 TB of data copied in 13 hours, 20 min or 13.33 hrs.
= 1080 GB of data copied per 13.33 hours
= 1080 GB / 13.33 hours
= 81 GB / hour

2) Any guesses as to how much the transfer speeds will improve when transferring
From: the backup drive
To: my new 16" with 4TB and maxed out otherwise? (64GB memory, i9 CPU, etc.)

 

[ephone1]

I think it's slow. When I do a Time Machine backup after I've used Windows in VMware Fusion, my backup is around 70 Gigs. I can back that up in under 20 minutes over a Gig ethernet connection to my Synology NAS. That said, I have to turn-off the MacOS throttling to get those speeds. I don't know if CC Cloner throttles by default.

 

[fehhkk]

81GB/hr is about 22MB/s second which is very slow. I restored my 380GB time machine into my 16" and took about 45mins using a USB 3.1 SSD backup drive.

 

[jerryk]

Seagate Backup Plus is rather slow. But, for a backup and restore it does the job at a low price point. Just start it up and go away for a day or so. I have one I use only for doing such large bulk copies. Got the 8TB version very cheap at Best Buy.

 

[MareLuce]

ugh
i screwed up
Left in a hurry this afternoon and forgot to plug back in my old laptop after I moved it.
When I returned, battery was dead.
Drive and laptop powered off.

Now, the Seagate drive won't make itself visible in Finder.
I've power cycled...

When I try to Mount it, I only see the spinning vortex.

 

[MareLuce]

Update:

I fixed the problem of the drive being invisible by:
- rebooting a couple times
- switching USB-C ports its plugged into
- running the Disk Utility app and making it scan for all drives (trying to remember what I clicked on to make it re-sniff...)

But OMG now it's even slower

339.56 GB copied in 11.38 hours

30 GB / hour
or
50 MB / minute


Odd. My source drive is 1.8 TB full. My backup drive now has 2.11 TB of data.
I haven't created that much new data since I started backing it up...

 

[matram]

This must be an issue with your HDD. I get about 100 MB / second using CCC or TimeMachine to a directly connected LaCie d2 Professional 10TB.

 

[MareLuce]

Dang. If this backup ever completes, should I run a disk test on it?
(the Seagate Backup Plus)
I believe I'm still within the return period.

If yes, what should it be? I'm assuming it's 5400 RPMs based on earlier comments.

I have been plagued by slow backup times on any laptop I've ever had, Windows or Mac.

I'd rather clean toilets than do backups, but it's critically important and I don't trust anyone else to do it.

Worse, than the slow backup times, my last 3 WD backup disk drives have failed
- 2 were the WiFi kind
- 1 was the ultra
though from a different topic this is not uncommon with WD backup drives recently.

On the good, I just ordered my first NAS - a Synology DiskStation DS718+
I've waited several years to catch a sale on this exact model and it finally happened
Normally $399. This B&H sale put it to $309 with free shipping and no tax.
https://slickdeals.net/f/13629178-s...r-ds418-4-bay-289-free-s-h?page=8#commentsBox


and 2 disk drives
10TB Ultrastar 7200 rpm SATA 3.5"
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1509234-REG/wd_10tb_ultrastar_3_5_drive_2.html

 

[Fishrrman]

Get a USB3 drive.
A USB3 SSD is best.

Use CCC to do the clone.
With almost 2tb of data, it's going to take a LONG time.

Now you can try migration assistant to "move it over" to the new MPB.

But... as I cautioned you in another post... don't be surprised if you start running into "permissions problems" because you have already created an account with (what I assume is) your "regular" username and password on the new laptop.

That was NOT "the way to do it".
You're probably going to end up with TWO user accounts with similar names.

 

[matram]

A word of caution. My experience with TM over a network connection is that it is terribly slow. I got about 8 MB/sec.

That was a Samba server i had put together myself with a samsung ssd.

I spent quite a lot of time trying to get good performance out of that. Eventually I gave up and went with directly connected disks. That was a huge improvement.

 

[ephone1]

A word of caution. My experience with TM over a network connection is that it is terribly slow. I got about 8 MB/sec.

That was a Samba server i had put together myself with a samsung ssd.

I spent quite a lot of time trying to get good performance out of that. Eventually I gave up and went with directly connected disks. That was a huge improvement.

The first command in this article sped up my Time Machine backups by an order of magnitude. I was getting 15MB/s average. After I run this command, I see peeks of 100MB/s. You have to redo the command after reboot.

http://www.mackungfu.org/massively-speed-up-time-capsule-time-machine-backups

 

[matram]

I am aware of the command to set TM priority. I did try it, without effect. The bottleneck was somewhere else. Neither the MBP or the file server showed any significant CPU load so my thinking was more around network issues.

A file copy through finder was also quite slow, alhough faster than TM, so this was not unique to TM.

 

[MareLuce]

Use CCC to do the clone.

Done.

Now you can try migration assistant to "move it over" to the new MPB.

But... as I cautioned you in another post... don't be surprised if you start running into "permissions problems" because you have already created an account with (what I assume is) your "regular" username and password on the new laptop.

That was NOT "the way to do it".
You're probably going to end up with TWO user accounts with similar names.

My old MBP username = ExMachina.
My new 16" MBP username was something different.

I'm used to upgrading within Thinkpads, where I always keep the data separate, even from the Windows... folders

Then I just move the c:\CreatedData folders.
c:\CreatedData\Proj1
c:\CreatedData\Proj2
etc...

I would rather re-start the new 16" process from scratch to prevent any permissions problems. No saved data on it.

I will go back and re-read what you wrote to do 'from scratch' in that other topic I linked to in the MAC OS forum question migration thread I started.
(in that reply you wrote about the right way to do it in the older thread)