Fast Transfer Speed External Hard Drives

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Hard Drive & Device Connector Speeds

External Desktop Hard Drives (40 products) If you are looking for an external hard drive with massive storage capacity you need a desktop model rather than a portable drive. Desktop hard drives typically supply more storage space than their smaller and lighter counterparts. Data TRANSFER SPEEDS are usually written in bits – either as Megabits per second 1000 bits, Gigabits per second 1000 Megabits, or Terabits per second 1000 Gigabits or 1000000 Megabits. These transfer speeds are shortened to Mb/s or Mbps. Sometimes data transfer speed (or especially access speed) is written as bytes, however.

What do all the various hard drive and device connector speeds mean? At what speed can I expect my data to actually flow? The confusion with connector speeds and how fast a PC crunches data is partially because of the confusion between Megabits (Mb), Gigabits (Gb), Megabytes (MB), and Gigabytes (GB). Program adobe premiere.

  • With any external hard drive interface, keep in mind that you will only achieve its maximum data transfer rate if your computer—and the external hard drive—support it. USB 3.0 is capable of 625 MB/s. However, check the rated speed of the external drive (it likely can't move data that fast).
  • Dec 05, 2018 USB 3 is supposed to have a maximum throughput of 5Gbps. That should allow for around 500MB/s transfer at best. However, there are no HDDs which can handle that speed.
  • This File Transfer Time Calculator is used to determine the approximate time that a file would take to transfer over a particular interface. The speeds are optimistic because the actual inferface will be slowed down by overhead (ex: requests for the information, syncs.), more than one transfer at a time, and the interface not performing at the standard speed.

Data SIZE is usually written in bytes - either as Megabytes (1000 bytes), Gigabytes (1000 Megabytes), or Terabytes (1000 Gigabytes or 1,000,000 Megabytes).

Data TRANSFER SPEEDS are usually written in bits – either as Megabits per second [1000 bits], Gigabits per second [1000 Megabits], or Terabits per second [1000 Gigabits or 1000000 Megabits]. These transfer speeds are shortened to Mb/s or Mbps. Sometimes data transfer speed (or especially access speed) is written as bytes, however. Computer Components usually use Megabits or Gigabits per Second to convey how fast data flows; and Device Connectors, Bus Speeds, and Controllers are usually spoken of in terms of megabytes or gigabytes per second to convey how fast data flows. This leads to confusion regarding how fast each part of the connection actually goes. Converting between transfer speeds can get especially confusing because 1 byte=8 bits (rather than a multiple of 10).

Data Speeds

  • 1 Byte=8 Bits
  • 1 MB=8 Mb
  • 1 GB=8 Gb

How Fast Are My Devices?

The following are various devices, slots, and connectors and their equivalent theoretical speeds:

TypeMbit/s | Gb/sMB/s
USB 2.0 Connector .5 Gb/s (480 Mbit/s)
280 Mbit/s effective
60 MB/s
35 MB/s effective
WD Red Hard Drive 1.2 Gb/s (1200 Mbit/s) 150 MB/s
SATA II Connector 3 Gb/s (3000 Mbit/s) 375 MB/s
Samsung SATA III SSD 4.3 Gb/s (4320 Mbit/s) 540 MB/s
USB 3.0 Connector 5 Gb/s (5000 Mbit/s) 625 MB/s
SATA III Connector 6 Gb/s (6000 Mbit/s) 750 MB/s
USB 3.1 Connector 10 Gb/s 1250 MB/s
Thunderbolt 10 Gb/s 1250 MB/s
PCIe 2.0 x4 Lanes
(4 Lanes of PCIe 3.0 system bus)
16 Gb/s 2000 MB/s
DMI 2.0 16 Gb/s 4X PCIe 2.0 Lanes 2000 MB/s
Thunderbolt 2 20 Gb/s (Effectively 16 Gb/s because it uses 4x PCIe 2.0 lanes) 2500 MB/s
Samsung 950 PRO M.2 SSD 20 Gb/s 2500 MB/s read, 1500 MB/s write
Samsung 960 EVO M.2 SSD 25.6 Gb/s 3200 MB/s read, 1900 MB/s write
Samsung 960 PRO M.2 SSD 28 Gb/s 3500 MB/s read, 2100 MB/s write
PCIe 3.0 x4 (4 Lanes of PCIe 3.0 system bus) 31.5 Gb/s 3940 MB/s
DMI 3.0 31.5 Gb/s
4X PCIe 3.0 Lanes
3940 MB/s
M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 Slot 31.5 Gb/s
Directly To Bus
3940 MB/s
Directly To Bus
Thunderbolt 3 40 Gb/s
(Effectively 31.5 Gb/s because it uses 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes)
5000 MB/s
(Effectively 3940 MB/s because it uses 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes)

Remember, just because a connection has the theoretical potential for a certain speed, doesn't mean it will reach that speed. Most standard (spinning) hard drives max out at around 150 MB/s. This is even less than the old SATA I specifications of 188 MB/s. So, for standard spinning hard drives, it doesn't matter that SATA III specifications can go up to 750 MB/s, because the hard drive cannot.

Before NVMe PCIe Direct, NVMe U.2, and NVMe M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 drives; most SSD drives (even M.2 drives) maxed out at 550 MB/s. This is still less than the SATA III specification of 750 MB/s. PCIe slots on motherboards can be limited and M.2 drives can be pricey, but the latest M.2 drives can NOW reach read/write speeds of up to 28 Gb/s, taking advantage of MOST of the M.2 slot's PCIe 3.0 x4 bandwidth (31.5 Gb/s).

Potential Bottlenecks With PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 Drives

Fast Transfer Speed External Hard Drives

Fast Transfer Speed External Hard Drives

Another example of a connection not running at its theoretical speed, can occur when you run a newer PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 drives on an older motherboard such as a Z97 motherboard. The Z97 chipset operates off the PCIe 2.0 standard and so M.2 drives ran on Z97 can only run at the maximum speed of PCIe 2.0 x4, which is the equivalent of 2000 MB/s. Your 2500 MB/s or 3500 MB/s M.2 drive would not be able to run at full speed on a motherboard with a chipset that utilizes PCIe 2.0 x4.

Direct Media Interface Speed | DMI Bottlenecks

The Direct Media Interface (DMI) bandwidth is another limitation on your PC that a lot of computer users are not aware of. Most (BUT NOT ALL) Intel 100 Series chipsets (Skylake) utilize DMI 3.0, which gives the user a full 4 lanes of PCIe 3.0 to transfer between the chipset side of the motherboard (the Platform Controller Hub or PCH) and the CPU (or CPU controlled side of the motherboard). For Z170, H170, B150, and others, using DMI 3.0 means that 31.5 Gb/s of information can flow from one side of the PC to the other at any given point.

On most Z170, H170, and B150 motherboards, features such as M.2, SATA, Audio, Wi-Fi, USB, LAN, a TPM module, and lower level PCIe cards use the Chipset (PCH) to direct the flow of information. The chipset then determines which information will be allocated to go through the Direct Media Interface (DMI 3.0) to be processed by the CPU. Depending on what other tasks the chipset side of your PC is doing at any given moment, you might not be able to FULLY utilize the full 4 lanes of PCIe 3.0 your newest, lightning fast NVMe PCIe 3.0x4 M.2 drive or Thunderbolt 3 device needs to be processed at full speed, because you may be sharing bandwidth with some of the other functions on your chipset.

Typical Functions Controlled By The Chipset

  • 6 GB/s SATA Ports
  • HD Onboard Audio
  • USB 3.0/2.0
  • PCIe Expansion (Z170, Z270, H170, B150, H110, C232(X99 and C623 usually allocate 2x PCIe slots to the CPU)
  • LAN
  • M.2

NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 Drive Bottlenecks

When using an older chipset (for instance Z97,H97,X99,B150), the direct media interface is version 2.0. DMI 2.0 runs approximately half the speed of DMI 3.0 and won't be able to fully utilize the lastest M.2 drives.

As always, if you need any help deciphering your PC needs, don't hesitate to contact us and ask one of our friendly technicians.

How to Speed Up a USB 3.0 External Hard Drive in Windows 10/8/7

If your hard drive is slow, you are in the right place. This page walks you through the way to speed up and increase a USB 3.0 external hard drive for data transferring or file copying in Windows 10, 8, or 7, etc. If you are having one of the problems listed below, you'll need to find a way to improve the performance and speed up your external hard drive:

  1. 1. Copying files stops halfway
  2. 2. External hard drive transfer speed slow
  3. 3. File copying slow on USB 3.0 flash drive or external hard drive
  4. 4. The computer gets stuck while copying or transferring files to USB 3.0
  5. 5. PC freeze on copying files from USB 3.0..

To increase the transfer speed of the external hard drive, we listed the five best methods for fixing this issue, and you can apply any one of them for a try:

Workable SolutionsStep-by-step Troubleshooting
1. Optimize the PerformanceConnect your external hard drive to your PC. Open Windows File Explorer..Full steps
2. Convert USB 3.0 Drive to NTFSInstall and launch EaseUS Partition Master on your computer..Full steps
3. Fix Corrupted System FilesPress Win + X to bring up the Power User menu and select Command Prompt..Full steps
4. Clean Up Junk FilesDownload EaseUS Tools M for free and install it on your computer..Full steps
5. Format External Hard DriveConnect your external hard drive to a Windows 10 PC. Open File Explorer, locate and right-click..Full steps

Tip 1. Optimize External Hard Drive Performance to Increase Speed

When the storage devices get slow, one quick way to improve the device's performance is to change the device hardware settings. Follow the steps below to speed up your external hard drive.

Step 1. Connect your external hard drive to your PC.

Step 2. Open Windows File Explorer, locate and right-click on your external hard drive, choose 'Properties'.

Step 3. On the Hardware tab, click 'Properties', and choose 'Change Settings' on the General tab.

Step 4. Click the 'Policies' tab, choose 'Better performance', and click 'OK' to confirm all the changes.

Then, you can check if your external hard drive has become fast in speed.

Tip 2. Convert USB 3.0 External Hard Drive to NTFS to Speed It Up

The file system type affects the external hard drive transfer speed deeply. Storage devices with NTFS work faster and more efficiently for file copy and file transfer. Thus, the most useful way to increase USB 3.0 external hard drive speed is to convert the USB 3.0 external hard drive from FAT32 to NTFS.

Professional partition magic software - EaseUS Partition Master can help. It enables you to convert the external hard drive to the NTFS file system within three simple steps. This disk management tool has many other highlights:

  • Migrate OS to SSD or HDD
  • Resize partition size to increase C drive space
  • Format a hard drive or partition for free

Fast Transfer Speed External Hard Drives External

Download this software and convert FAT32 to NTFS without losing data:

Step 1: Install and launch EaseUS Partition Master on your computer.

Step 2: Select a FAT32 partition, right-click on it and select 'Convert to NTFS'. If you need to convert a storage device such as SD card or USB flash drive to NTFS, insert it into your PC first and repeat the previous operation.

Step 3: Click 'OK' on the pop-up dialog box to continue.

Step 4: Go to the upper left corner, click the 'Execute 1 Operation' button and you will see the operation details. Click 'Apply' and 'Finish' when the process completes.

Tip 3. Fix Corrupted System Files to Increase External HDD Speed

If the USB 3.0 external hard drive contains corrupted system files, the file copying or data transferring speed will slow down naturally. SFC command line can efficiently help find and repair the corrupted system files on your external hard drive. Here are the steps to run SFC/SCANNOW.

Step 1. Press Win + X to bring up the Power User menu and select 'Command Prompt'.

Step 2. Type: sfc /scannow and hit 'Enter'.

Also read SFC finds corrupted files but unable to fix if anything goes wrong.

Tip 4. Increase Transfer Speed of External Hard Drive by Cleanup

Descargar pdf gratis para windows 10. You can clear and remove useless junk files on PC that make your USB 3.0 slow for file transferring. After using the computer for a long time, many useless junk files are taking space on the hard drive. And the best way is to apply a simple free way to clean and remove useless junk files that slow down your USB 3.0 external hard drive for transfer files and data.

To make things easy for you, we'd like to recommend you try EaseUS Tools M for help. You can free download it here and follow the steps below to clean up junk files in Windows 10/8/7 now:

Step 1. DOWNLOAD EaseUS Tools M for free and install it on your computer.

Step 2. Launch EaseUS Tools M in Windows PC. Select 'Large File Cleanup' on the main screen.

Step 3. Select the drive and click 'Scan' to let the program locate, find all large files on your disk.

Step 4. Identify and select useless large files and click 'Delete' to remove those files from your PC or laptop. A message pops up and tells you this process will permanently delete the files. Click 'Yes' to start the process.

Tip 5. Format USB 3.0 External Hard Drive to Speed It Up

Another efficient way to quickly fix the slow external hard drive issue on Windows PC is to format the USB 3.0 external hard drive to NTFS. Format hard drive erase all data. Format a partition could cause data loss. If you have essential data on the device, copy, and extract crucial data to another hard drive first.

To format the external hard drive to NTFS File System:

Step 1. Connect your external hard drive to a Windows 10 PC.

Step 2. Open File Explorer, locate and right-click on the drive, select 'Format'.

Best External Hard Drives

Step 3. Set the NTFS as the target file system, tick 'Quick Format' and click 'Start' to start the formatting.

Additional Tip - How to Back Up External Hard Drive Files

Although these methods can help you fix the slow USB 3.0 external hard drive issue, some may also cause unnecessary data loss errors on your drive. To avoid unnecessary data loss issue, you should copy and extract important data on your USB 3.0 external hard drive to your PC or another secure storage device in advance.

You can either choose to copy and paste existing files from your slow external hard drive to a new device at a very slow speed or prefer a more efficient and fast alternative tool to back up and extract all your files from the external hard drive to a new device at one time at high speed.

If you choose the latter option, you may turn to EaseUS Todo Backup Free for help. It is easy and risk-free to back up files from your external hard drive with a small space occupation on your target device.

Step 1: Open EaseUS Todo Backup and select 'File' as the backup mode.

You may have a large amount of vital data to be protected as time goes on, such as documents, pictures, music, and videos, etc. It is always a good habit to have a backup on a regular basis. File Backup is one of the best choices for you to get over unexpected data loss.

Step 2: Select the files that you want to back up.

Tick the option at the top left corner named User Defined, you can browse to back up one or some specific file types on your computer or external storage device.

Step 3: Select a destination to save your backup file.

You'd better create the backup file in some other storage media or in some other drive. If not, there may be a risk of the backup file getting corrupted or destroyed.

Step 4: Click 'Proceed' to execute your operation.

Conclusion

Whenever you are faced with external hard drive slow transfer speed, you can try these solutions above. These tips should help you increase your transfer speeds. EaseUS Partition Master plays a vital role in solving your slow issue. Besides, this software can help you with disk management, partition clone, and system migration. You can always try this product to enjoy extra features.





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