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which is better for hard drive transfers: ide or usb cable

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techidave:
I was just looking at one of those usb to ide/sata adaptors online and since I don't have one to check with, I was wondering what your experiences were.  I have been opening my case and plugging hard drives into the ide cable to transfer data off of them.  It would save time if I didn't have to open the case and could use the usb instead.

has anyone done any testing to determine how much faster one is over the other?  For example, if I needed to transfer 10gb of data and the ide was only 5 minutes faster, then that's not too bad.  But if it takes an hour, then that's bad.

I have googled this but haven't found the answer yet.  Most specs talk in percent and I would rather know in minutes or hours.

Brings up another question, which adaptor is the best one to get?  hopefully it would be able to do 2.5" drives also/

Dave

f0dder:
USB2 runs at 480mbit/s, or a theoretical max of 60MB/s. In practice, you're not going to get that high however, but probably closer to 40-50MB/s. This is a good deal slower than what modern harddrives can run at when connected internally, but it's still less than five minutes for 10 gigabytes so it's probably going to be fast enough - and definitely a lot more convenient than powering off your computer, mucking around inside the case, etc.

cranioscopical:
I was given one of these just yesterday.  Haven't tried it yet but I'll be using the eSATA connection when I do.
BlacX
and
Another link

Shades:
It takes about ten minutes to transfer 10GByte over a 100Mbit network using Total copy, a shell extension that really speeds up copying over a network. Only the system that initiates the transfer requires the software, nothing has to be installed on the receiving system.

When you have an external HD, use that for transferring data. Nothing beats the ease of use from that solution, but the Total copy thing is a close second...which also doesn't require you to open up machines and toy around with HD's.

yogi22:
I have removed a cover from the back of my desktop, and have fed SATA and IDE data and power cables from inside, to the fresh air. It is easy to hookup a spare HD for data transfer.

Slightly more hassle than a USB external HD case.
About the same hassle as hooking up a USB adapter.

IDE and SATA speed. For me, it's a no-brainer.
kk

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