Slow HDD?

[ChitownE]

Hey all,

I've got a MacBook Pro with 2 GB RAM and a 100 GB 7200 RPM HDD. I've been using SuperDuper to backup my disk to an external HDD, and feel like things are running much slower than they should be. The external is a LaCie Mobile (Porche design) USB 2.0 drive. SuperDuper is showing copy speeds of about 7 MB/s, and it started much slower - around 3 MB/s. So, it took about 2.5 hours to copy my internal HDD to the external. Is this reasonable? Am I asking too much from my MBP?? Just want to see if I should start poking around for disk issues.

Thanks,

~ Eric

 

[dpaanlka]

If your external drive features Firewire (regardless whether it's 400 or 800) that would be a faster choice.

 

[deadpixels]

how much gigs did you backup? try CarbonCopyCloner (there's a beta that should work with intel macs) to see if it's faster.

 

[e12a]

I second the use of Firewire. Backed up to my firewire 400 enclosure and SuperDuper! read speeds of 13 mb/s when i left the computer alone.

 

[ChitownE]

no firewire

It's only USB 2.0, unfortunately. So, what I'm hearing, though, is that MB/s isn't all that slow? Doesn't look like there's a problem with my internal HDD?

~ E

 

[Brandhaus]

Well that's probably your issue. I think the USB is limiting your transfer speed, not the hardrive.

 

[blackscooby]

I use SuperDuper to backup to my USB2 WD external drive. Yes it does appear quite slow on mine too but I guessed it was the USB performance and not the drive itself.

However I do boot from the USB device and that works perfectly ! It might be slightly slower but often it's barely noticeable.

 

[slffl]

I've been using SuperDuper for quite some time now, and it's always been slow backing up my 60GB powerbook over FW800. Takes a good 4 hours.

 

[kolax]

I can only get about 2-5 MB/s with my ex.HDD on USB 2.0 and with FireWire 800 get about 12MB/s.

Pretty crap

 

[netguy]

I copy 600GB of data from one external fw800 device to an identical one, and it does about 3GB a minute. No additional software needed. Just run it once a week, when I am leaving the house, and I am good to go.