move 100GB between PC's
 

Hi,

What is the best way to move 100GB of data between computers.
I am using Vista Ultimate 64bit and the machine I need the data on is XP Home 32bit.

I did think about setting up an ftp server and doing that way.
Both have access to the net.

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

just network them and copy it over in sections . Ive done it before dont expect it to be fast but it will do it wired would be better

Are they in the same house?

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

If in the same house I'd personally whip the HDD out of one and put in the other one, will save a lot of time later on..

Otherwise a cross-over cable directly between the two will get a better speed than going through a hub.

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

You could also FTP the files
http://filezilla-project.org/

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

Yes the PC is in the same room and both connected via the router. I don't really want to take the HDD out of one PC and put in the other.
I think I will just setup a Filezilla FTP server on the XP and upload from the Vista PC, I can leave it over night if needed.

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

I'd forget about FTP and just share the drives in windows..

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

yeah I second that just copy and paste had to do that kinda amount of data loads of times

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

USB2 or esata would be faster than over 100mb network if you have an external drive.

If you're going down the network route I think it's faster if you pull the files from destination pc, rather than push from source pc. Also, I think I read that its also faster if you actually map a drive to the source directory rather than going to "My Network Places|Entire Network|PC|directory" route.

HTH

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

If you wanted to be really geeky you could use something like netcat to pass the data between the two machines - that would just be over complicating things for the sake of buggering around with a geeky command line application though :D

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

dont talk wet how can having to copying files to an external drive then having to copying them to the next machine be quicker somehow I do not think so

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

As a thought.....depending on the type of data it might be worth compressing it before you do the transfer, that way you're transferring less data.....

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

but compression takes ages also. Best bet is to just chuck it across the network

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

Depends on the network, 10-100-1000...

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

Possible 10MB/s across the 100Mb/s network vs. Sata2 speeds of around 70-100MB/s.

I'd pick HDD-HDD vs network.

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

I should have took the esata out bold lol I thought it firewire lol

It was I talking wet

go out and buy yourself a nice expensive esata enclosure a hard drive and adapters for the PC to copy the data :) ;)

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

USB2 gives 480Mb/sec so even having to copy twice would still be more than twice as fast as 100Mb/sec network.




I did say ;)

I'm only going on recent past experience where I had to copy about 1TB of data on to a new NAS box I got. It doubles up as a USB device and I found copying in USB mode to be far quicker than over LAN.

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

I don't know exact statistics, but USB2 only manages 480Mb/sec in bursts. The sustained speed is considerably lower.

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

every USB hard drive ive ever used has been slowwwwwwwwww to say the least often failing totally when you through large amounts of files at them at them @ once I hate them. I did miss the esata bit I do champion that technology and did admit my error. Still the network is already in place and will handle the data transfer with no messing around imo

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

Touché. 480Mb max theoretical transfer rate. Its still faster than LAN imho :)

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

But as the two computers are already networked and if the transfer rate is genuinely 100Mbps then to transfer 100GB of data using the LAN is just over two hours work.
That's cheap and cheerful, sounds good to me.
:cool:

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

I just finished it via filezilla ftp server.
80.5GB in 2 hours

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

Oh yeah, I am not disputing that..

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

Ok run a test with hardware I have to hand

USB2 2.5 inch hdd

2.9 gig of random sized files

Time to copy to drive and copy from drive 6 minutes 11 seconds add 30 seconds to move device to other computer total approx 6 minutes 40 seconds

Time across network from Vista x64 pc to XP pc of same files was 4 minutes 47 seconds

Take from that what you will

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

What network cards are you using zing? What transfer rate are they rated for?

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

nothing special just the marvel yukon on my asus board and whatever the old am2 board has.

The thing is although the USB drive copied back to the drive @ around 17 /18 MBps it only wrote to the disk @ around 11 . Across the network I got a steady 11 MBps basically meaning it was purely quicker because I didnt have to do it twice.

Ive never liked USB drives and it is only a standard ide 2.5" drive most likely 4200 rpm so a sata would be quicker but I doubt it will be that much faster to actually beat the test although it may. I tried it with a kingston pen drive and copying from that was of but to it was awful ( I didnt expect good results)

The USB speed rate imo is bobbins :)

Over the 80 gig there would have been about 20 minutes difference

Re: move 100GB between PC's
 

Fair enough, but why bother with an FTP server/client over a Windows network, probably more overheads than Windows built in sharing?