Thinkpads Forum

I have to frequently transfer a large number of large files from other peoples computers and transfer them to my own. Frequently, I do this under a severe time crunch. No, doing a networked crossover cable is not an option. Neither is firewire. I can't always be near both machines at the same time, so direct USB is out too.

I'd like to know what the fastest combination for large file transfer is. Is it a particular brand of USB stick, or is it a Class 6 SDHD card in a USB adapter, or is it a different tech altogether?

I'm looking for something with at least 8GB capacity, prefereably more.


Thanks!

I would say that it sort of depends upon the USB systems on each computer. If they have USB 1.1, then no matter what speed of USB memory stick you use, your going to be limited to the 1.1 speed of about 1.5MB/sec. (assuming full speed). USB 2.0 tops out at around 480MB/sec. I believe that both specs are theoretical limits; real world data transfer speeds will be a bit lower.

Most USB memory sticks now are USB 2.0 compatible but that's not really saying that they can transfer data at the full speed provided by the 2.0 interface. Your best bet would be to look at the data transfer speeds of various thumb drives and get one that has the highest speed. Class 6 SDHC cards appear to be rated at a maximum of 20MB/sec so you would need to be using USB 2.0 on both ends of the data transfer to make that worthwhile.

As far as other technologies are concerned, given the data capacity you are talking about, the only other possibility that I can think of would be an external hard drive.

Would an external hard drive work? 3.5" drives essentially saturate USB 2.0, and 2.5" drives should come very close to doing so these days. Cheap per gigabyte compared to solid state, and if you get a 2.5" you will probably get away without a power adapter too.

A 100MB hard drive is faster than an 8GB Flash drive?

ATA-6 (aka Ultra ATA/100) has a 100MB/sec data transfer rate. The older (and slower) ATA-4 interface is rated at 33MB/sec so hard drive data transfer speeds are much faster than any flash-based storage medium.

xxPaulCPxx wrote:A 100MB hard drive is faster than an 8GB Flash drive?

Not sure if that was a typo? 100 MB probably not, 100 GB probably yes.


A couple of notes: USB 2.0 is specified at 480 Mb/s (megabits), which is 60 MB/s (megabytes); because of connection-specific overhead the effective speed is a bit less than that. Further, the interface (USB, ATA, SATA) speeds are theoretical maximums and hard drives themselves may or may not reach them (probably will in case of USB, may in case of ATA, definitely won't in case of SATA/300).

As a general rule of thumb, newer, or larger, or higher RPM hard drives are faster than older, or smaller, or lower RPM drives respectively.

I never thought to actually try it out!

I just tried a folder back and forth from my laptop to my 100GB (yep, typo above) 7200 ATA Hitach through a generic USB enclosure.

The folder was 1.03 GB large.

The drive copied it up in about 54 seconds, and wrote it back to the laptop in 34 seconds.

Compare it to my 2gb Cruzer Micro... I stopped it after it passed a minute and a half. Just no comparison.

Sold - thanks guys! I guess I was stuck in old thinking, believing flash was faster than a platter.

from my experience:
a SATA desktop hdd (WD120gb) in an external rack (Lacie black brick) it's faster than any usb stick i have/tried - even on the nativ port, or the pcmcia usb2.0 thingie

Another option (assuming the other computers are Thinkpads too), would be to use a HD in an Ultrabay caddy. Transfer rates are usually faster than USB.

I'm surprised at the results that xxPaulCPxx got. Did the hard drive have caching enabled? That would have indicated that it was done before the test actually completed.

Anyways, Patriot and Corsair have high-speed USB flash drives such as this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820220261

xxPaulCPxx wrote:I never thought to actually try it out!

I just tried a folder back and forth from my laptop to my 100GB (yep, typo above) 7200 ATA Hitach through a generic USB enclosure.

The folder was 1.03 GB large.

The drive copied it up in about 54 seconds, and wrote it back to the laptop in 34 seconds.

Compare it to my 2gb Cruzer Micro... I stopped it after it passed a minute and a half. Just no comparison.

Sold - thanks guys! I guess I was stuck in old thinking, believing flash was faster than a platter.

Sandisk and maybe some others make very fast USB Jumpdrives. I copy my Quickbooks company files which is over 2gb in only 10 seconds or so. I think I am using the Cruzer 16gb Titainium from Sandisk. If it took that long something else is wrong.