Copying nearly 400 GB worth of data from one Mac to another

[wrldwzrd89]

I can rule out the home network for this job - way too slow, even at wireless-G speeds. Therefore, I'm going to be using an external Firewire 400 HDD to do the copy. I've already copied the data on the source Mac to the drive. How long will I have to wait for the copy job to complete (ignoring time spent setting up the drive and getting its cables moved/connected)? The destination Mac runs Snow Leopard, and supports Firewire 400. The source Mac runs Tiger, and is PowerPC-based (it's a Rev C iMac G5, with its memory upgraded to 2.5 GB and HDD upgraded to 320 GB), if that makes any difference - it's limited to FireWire 400 only, and lacks a FW 800 port.

 

[GoCubsGo]

It can vary but you could be looking at a good 10 hours.

 

[knewsom]

If they're both FW400, as long as the source was not terribly bottlenecked by an extremely fragmented HD, or the FW drive isn't a really crappy one with horrific write speeds, then it should be nearly the exact same amount of time to copy to your destination.

400GB, on FW400, should only take 4-6 hours.

 

[spinnerlys]

You could also have used a direct Firewire connection, as it creates a Firewire network, or you could have connected them via Gigabit Ethernet.

The final copying time depends on the target's HDD speed and if it can fully utilize the FW speeds.

If it can, the minimum time to copy 400GB of data with 35MB/s will be 195 minutes, with 20MB/s it will be 341 minutes.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Something must be wrong on my end. That much data took nearly 10 hours I thought when I tried. I figured it had to do with me using a slower HDD (5400 RPM).

 

[aristobrat]

I was going to recommend what spinnerlys did, which is gigabit ethernet, if the older Mac supports that. I know there's overhead for networking, but 1000mbps with overhead should still hopefully be faster than Firewire's 400mbps?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

You know what, that's actually a really clever idea. The older Mac DOES support Gigabit Ethernet. I didn't think of that. Thanks, spinnerlys!

 

[knewsom]

Something must be wrong on my end. That much data took nearly 10 hours I thought when I tried. I figured it had to do with me using a slower HDD (5400 RPM).

Well, if your drive, either of them, was badly fragmented, or the Directory was damaged, or if either the FW drive or the internal were kinda old, that could easily explain why.

 

[GGJstudios]

I was going to recommend what spinnerlys did, which is gigabit ethernet, if the older Mac supports that. ...

I don't believe the older iMac supports gigabit ethernet. MacTracker doesn't mention which is Rev C.... apparently the later versions of the G5 (starting with May, 2005) do support gigabit ethernet, but the earlier ones don't.

 

[spinnerlys]

You know what, that's actually a really clever idea. The older Mac DOES support Gigabit Ethernet. I didn't think of that. Thanks, spinnerlys!

I get 40MB/s out of my Gigabit Ethernet, so it should be faster than Firewire and will theoretically only take 170 minutes to copy 400GB.

My basis for calculation: 400GB * 1024 (to get from GB to MB) / 40 MB/s / 60 (to get from seconds to minutes).

EDIT: According to everymac.com. the revision C models (1.9GHz and 2.1GHz) support Gigabit Ethernet.

 

[madog]

Something must be wrong on my end. That much data took nearly 10 hours I thought when I tried. I figured it had to do with me using a slower HDD (5400 RPM).

Slower drive or not, all FireWire enclosures/chipsets aren't created equally. You could have identical drives on two different FW enclosures from different manufacturers, and the "cheap" one will stand out if at all.

While USB is more consistently the same with every other USB device in terms of speed, it's constant speed is consistently slower than FW.

It's a fun trade off.

I usually figure it should be roughly a minute for each GB with FW400, though realistically it's a bit more. (I have no mathematic skills and that statement is based purely on observation).

 

[knewsom]

Slower drive or not, all FireWire enclosures/chipsets aren't created equally. You could have identical drives on two different FW enclosures from different manufacturers, and the "cheap" one will stand out if at all.

While USB is more consistently the same with every other USB device in terms of speed, it's constant speed is consistently slower than FW.

It's a fun trade off.

I usually figure it should be roughly a minute for each GB with FW400, though realistically it's a bit more. (I have no mathematic skills and that statement is based purely on observation).

True about the differing FW400 speeds. Even in computers you'll notice a difference, for some strange reason. My Hackintosh has NEVER worked as fast in Firewire as USB, or as fast as my old G5. That's one thing I'm looking forward to the new iMac for!