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Very slow transfer??????

I

iWalsh

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 4, 2008
31
0
I recently bought my first mac - a 13" macbook pro, base model. I needed to transfer a file from my mac to a pc. I transfered the 7gb file from my mac to an external hard drive and it took 3 hours. However when I transferred the file from the hard drive to the pc it took 4 minutes. I still cannot believe the different myself even though I am writing it. The pc is a 3 year old gateway, with decent specs but certainly not the latest.

What is the deal? That just seems crazy.
 
It has to do with "read" and "write" speeds.

When you add something from one place to another, it takes more time than when you subtract it. Your MacBook is definitely faster than your old PC, but "writing" a file to the external drive still takes a long time (especially a 7GB file!). Reading a file off the drive is always faster.

If you tried to copy a 7GB file from your PC to the drive, it'd probably take LONGER than 3 hours! But you could transfer it back to your Mac, and it'd only take a few minutes. Hopefully that makes sense...

Basically, it takes longer to copy files than it does to read them. That goes for any computer. Macs are just faster at it.
 
ziggyonice said:
It has to do with "read" and "write" speeds.

When you add something from one place to another, it takes more time than when you subtract it. Your MacBook is definitely faster than your old PC, but "writing" a file to the external drive still takes a long time (especially a 7GB file!). Reading a file off the drive is always faster.

If you tried to copy a 7GB file from your PC to the drive, it'd probably take LONGER than 3 hours! But you could transfer it back to your Mac, and it'd only take a few minutes. Hopefully that makes sense...

Basically, it takes longer to copy files than it does to read them. That goes for any computer. Macs are just faster at it.
Click to expand...


it shouldnt take anyhere near 3 hrs to transfer 7 gigs regardless of the cmps.. closer to 10-15 mins
 
Copying from Mac to a FAT formatted HD is painfully slow, but thats why no one use FAT anymore :p

3 hrs did seems way too long tho, but a PC-formatted HD will perform a lot better on a windows machine than a mac.
 
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