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

[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

[BigJim]

Slightly off topic:
@Shades - The Total Copy website has not been updated since January 2005 and the author admits to several bugs that he's working on. Can you offer any comments on that from your experience? And do you know what the "LukiEdition XP" is?? Tnx.

[Shades]

Until now I didn't experience any problem with the software. Copying files through the network really shaves minutes or seconds off (when copying the same file to the same location using only Windows explorer) depending on the size of the file.

However, it is not fast when copying from harddisk to an USB stick, copying from an USB stick does not give me any problem, speed-wise (on my 8Gbyte Kingston DataTraveler). Think it has to do with how files are written to the USB stick.

LukiEdition XP is the same software, except it uses the XP theme. The standard version uses a 'classic' look. It does on my system at least 

[rant]
Also, it is nice to know that there are bugs...without any hint of what they be, it is a useless comment to put on a website. Should be classified in the same league of useless comments like: 'My computer is broken.' or 'I cannot print' etc. 
[/rant]

EDIT: added a rant

[f0dder]

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.

I'd say a lot more, since you need a poweroff to plug/unplug drives - whereas USB and FireWire are hotplug.

[steeladept]

I used to work in a place that I would use the USB cables all the time.  They are WAY MORE convienient, but they are also WAY SLOWER.  Though, to be fair, I am fairly certain they were not USB2.  I believe it was USB1.  I literally took half a day to transfer about 40GB off a failing HD, and when it was time to leave and turn off power (due to a scheduled power outage), I still had not finished.  The next day I said to myself I wasn't going through that again, attached it as a slave in another machine, and finished the job in some absurdly small amount of time in comparison (10 minutes maybe?  Don't remember now).  With the newer ones, it may not be as big a deal.  In the end, I would first suggest a hard-drive dock that connects via eSATA (if available for all drives - don't know now).  If that was not available, I found the convenience factor outweighed time - YMMV.

[f0dder]

steeladept: no wonder it ran slow if it was USB1 (max 1.5MB/s, so probably something like 1.3MB/s in practice), and with a failing harddisk you might get sector re-reads as well . 10mins for 40gig data sounds a bit on the fast side, though - ~70MB/s for a drive "back in the 40GB days"? Still, a 30-40x speedup doesn't sound unlikely. USB1 is slow!

I find that firewire-400 runs somewhat faster than USB2, even though USB2 does 480mbit - it isn't as good at giving a single device full bandwidth, though. If you have firewire-800, there's probably not much reason to much around with attaching the drive internally.

[steeladept]

Yeah, that is why I made sure to point it out.  Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) I haven't had a reason to use it on USB2.  It was capable, just the PC's I had to use it on at the time were not.  That is how corporate life is though, I guess.  I still think they are significantly slower than IDE though, aren't they?  (too lazy to look up specs right now - reaching for coffee - maybe later ).

[CWuestefeld]

If you're working with an IDE hard drive, then there's nothing that will transfer the data faster than a direct IDE connection. If you use USB or Firewire to connect to an external drive enclosure, that container still must use IDE internally to talk to the drive itself. You don't need to know the actual numbers; in both cases there is an IDE interface involved, so regardless of how fast others might be, it can go no faster than IDE.

If you've resigned yourself to an external enclosure, then the optimal interface depends on the usage. Obviously firewire-800 is fastest (and isn't there a super-high-speed USB coming out?).

But Hi-speed USB2 and Firewire are similar, each edging the other in particular cases. A friend who was doing professional video editing found that for sustained transfers (i.e., huge files like video), Firewire was a better performer. For shorter bursts, USB2 was able to do a bit better than firewire.