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Xbox Series X SSD to HDD Tranfer speeds Vs SSD to SSD

Hello LTT Forum comunity, 
 
 
Since the Xbox Series X will have the capability of being able to have a HDD drive connected to it to store next generation Xbox Series X games on , but won't be able to have them be played straight from that HDD drive , it should still be possible to connect a external SSD drive up to the console via USB to house games on, But more importantly for the time being...  Being to be able increase the copy & transfer speed times of games from a external SSD to the internal SSD drive & the proprietary external SSD expansion card ? So weather or not the external SSD connected via USB is capable of having the games played directly from it , until proper compatible drives are released on the market. You should still be able to get the added benefit of faster written transfer speeds from SSD to SSD then what you'd typically get from a SSD to HDD drive , correct?  
 
Such as using a M.2 NVME SSD enclosure connected via Thunderbolt/USB - 3 to USB 3.1 or a 2.5" SSD drive Bay down to a regular external SSD drive should work fine to increase the transfer/copy rate from the External drive to the internal Drive ? 
 
 I'd been discussing it with some friends , And we're just looking for a bit more of a Definitive answer.  But logically if you can connect > House > Transfer to a HDD drive , then you should be able to do the same with a SSD to increase transfer speeds. 
 
But how much Quicker is it going to be & is it possible to get the time down to pretty much instantly transfer or at the very least down to a Few seconds 10-30 seconds.  As we get closer to to release of the Xbox Series X & PS5 I'm sure this is an issue that's going to be brought up quite a bit.  As I'm sure people aren't going to want to wait the same amount of time to download a game to transfer from drive to drive & are going to look for a solution in order to minimize that time as much as possible. 
 
 
Thank you for your time , I hope you,  your family, friends & Colleagues all remain safe & healthy during these Unprecedented times .
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An external SSD will be definitely faster than a HDD for copying files. How much depends on the external drive speed and the connection interface speed. If xboxsx has Usb 3.1 it can be up to 10Gbit/s. A Sata SSD would top out at 6Gbit/s. Both these speeds are still tenfold of that what HDDs can achieve.

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42 minutes ago, Medicate said:

An external SSD will be definitely faster than a HDD for copying files. How much depends on the external drive speed and the connection interface speed. If xboxsx has Usb 3.1 it can be up to 10Gbit/s. A Sata SSD would top out at 6Gbit/s. Both these speeds are still tenfold of that what HDDs can achieve.

Yeah agreed ,  I'm sure it'll be USB 3.1 as Microsoft/ Xbox phil Spencer is future proofing the Series X the best they can, I know most of the questions asked in my post they'd been mainly to spark conversations . Probably the only thing I'm not sure about eventhough it depends on the SSD transfer speeds on both the internal & external drive used , But how quickly do games Transfer/copy from SSD to SSD , is it possible with the right drives to have it almost instantly transfer say a 50-100Gb file or at least down to 10-30 seconds.  Say between a M.2 NVME PCI-E 3.0 SSD in a enclosure via Thunderbolt or USB-3 to a USB 3.1 to the custom PCI-E 4.0 SSD that the Xbox will have . And its quicker to just copy a Game file rather then to just transfer,  right ? Tomorrow I'll be doing testing with the drives I have , just Unfortunately I don't have any SSD drives anymore & need to buy more. Which is why I'm trying to figure out what kinda set up I'm gonna do for Storage going into this next Gen. Right now I'm using the WD BLACK D10 12TB HDD drive 

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21 minutes ago, Skatterbrain said:

But how quickly do games Transfer/copy from SSD to SSD , is it possible with the right drives to have it almost instantly transfer say a 50-100Gb file or at least down to 10-30 seconds.  Say between a M.2 NVME PCI-E 3.0 SSD in a enclosure via Thunderbolt or USB-3 to a USB 3.1 to the custom PCI-E 4.0 SSD that the Xbox will have. And its quicker to just copy a Game file rather then to just transfer, right?

That's pretty easy to calculate, if you know the port. Thunderbolt 3 has 40 Gbps so a 50 GB game should theoretically take 10 seconds to copy, if it is able to run at full bandwidth (assume some protocol overhead in reality). USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 would be 20 Gbps so 20 seconds and USB 3.1 is 10 Gbps so 40 seconds. Of course that assumes the SSD can deliver data at those speeds. The slowest transfer speed in the chain determines the result.

 

50 GB = 50 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 x 8 = 429,496,729,600 bit

40 Gbps = 40 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 42,949,672,960 bit per second

429,496,729,600 bit / 42,949,672,960 bit per second = 10 seconds

 

Plug in the numbers and you should be able to estimate the transfer speeds.

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49 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

That's pretty easy to calculate, if you know the port. Thunderbolt 3 has 40 Gbps so a 50 GB game should theoretically take 10 seconds to copy, if it is able to run at full bandwidth (assume some protocol overhead in reality). USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 would be 20 Gbps so 20 seconds and USB 3.1 is 10 Gbps so 40 seconds. Of course that assumes the SSD can deliver data at those speeds. The slowest transfer speed in the chain determines the result.

 

50 GB = 50 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 x 8 = 429,496,729,600 bit

40 Gbps = 40 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 42,949,672,960 bit per second

429,496,729,600 bit / 42,949,672,960 bit per second = 10 seconds

 

Plug in the numbers and you should be able to estimate the transfer speeds.

Hmmmm thank you very much that's greatly appreciated, yeah so from what I gathered from what research I've been doing is that 50GB @10GBit would roughly be 44 seconds & 150 @10Gbit would be 2+ mins . Which still isn't bad at all & much less time then I'd originally figured it'd be for that large of a file/game . But yeah I'm trying to learn this kinda stuff.

However  what I'm not entirely getting is where you're getting the 1024 x 1024 x 1024 value from ? , and wouldn't the time it'd take to transfer or copy the file/game size between drives Differ if the drive aren't the same & running or writing at different speeds? That calculation is based on both drives being the same having the same read/write speeds , correct? 

So do you possibly know of a good website that explains  most of this , that I can read.  that also explains the mathematics & the difference in values needed in the computation for the conversion for the (file size = time) calculation.  Other wise lol I'll just sit here asking to way too many questions trying to learn this stuff. 

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1 hour ago, Skatterbrain said:

However  what I'm not entirely getting is where you're getting the 1024 x 1024 x 1024 value from ?

That's simply the conversion factor between GB, MB, KB and Byte (Gigabyte, Megabyte, Kilobyte).

 

I guess it's technically more correct to say 1 GiB = 1024 MiB and 1 GB = 1000 MB these days, but I'm old school like that :D As far as I know Windows also still uses 1024 as a conversion factor (the factor is/was used simply because computers work in binary and a division by 1024 is easier to do than a division by 1000 in binary).

 

Quote

, and wouldn't the time it'd take to transfer or copy the file/game size between drives Differ if the drive aren't the same & running or writing at different speeds? That calculation is based on both drives being the same having the same read/write speeds , correct? 

Correct. Like I said above, the speed is determined by the slowest component. If your disk can read at 1 GB/s but the other disk can only write at 10 MB/s then your copy won't run any faster than 10 MB/s.

 

Quote

So do you possibly know of a good website that explains  most of this , that I can read.  that also explains the mathematics & the difference in values needed in the computation for the conversion for the (file size = time) calculation.  Other wise lol I'll just sit here asking to way too many questions trying to learn this stuff. 

The mathematics isn't all that difficult. You have a size, usually given in GB or MB. You have a transfer speed usually expressed in Gb/s (Gbps) or Mb/s (Mbps) but sometimes also MB/s. The important difference here is that GB means Gigabyte while Gb means Gigabit (1 byte = 8 bit). The trick is to convert everything to a common factor (usually bit).

 

So 1 GB would be 1 (GB) x 1024 (MB) x 1024 (KB) x 1024 (Byte) x 8 (Bit) = 8,589,934,592 bit

And 1 Gbps would be 1 (Gb) x 1024 (Mb) x 1024 (Kb) x 1024 (bit) = 1,073,741,824 bit per second

 

Now all you have to do is divide those two numbers. The result would be 8 seconds (since bit cancel each other out). So 1 GB @ 1 Gbps should take 8 seconds, which makes sense since 1 Byte = 8 Bit so the number of bits transferred per second is 1/8 of the file size ;)

 

~edit: Don't really have any links at hand. Learned most of that ages ago. But e.g. if you Google something like "file transfer calculator" there's tons of sites available that can do this without having to calculate all of that by hand.

Remember to either quote or @mention others, so they are notified of your reply

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24 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

That's simply the conversion factor between GB, MB, KB and Byte (Gigabyte, Megabyte, Kilobyte).

 

I guess it's technically more correct to say 1 GiB = 1024 MiB and 1 GB = 1000 MB these days, but I'm old school like that :D As far as I know Windows also still uses 1024 as a conversion factor (the factor is/was used simply because computers work in binary and a division by 1024 is easier to do than a division by 1000 in binary).

 

Correct. Like I said above, the speed is determined by the slowest component. If your disk can read at 1 GB/s but the other disk can only write at 10 MB/s then your copy won't run any faster than 10 MB/s.

 

The mathematics isn't all that difficult. You have a size, usually given in GB or MB. You have a transfer speed usually expressed in Gb/s (Gbps) or Mb/s (Mbps) but sometimes also MB/s. The important difference here is that GB means Gigabyte while Gb means Gigabit (1 byte = 8 bit). The trick is to convert everything to a common factor (usually bit).

 

So 1 GB would be 1 (GB) x 1024 (MB) x 1024 (KB) x 1024 (Byte) x 8 (Bit) = 8,589,934,592 bit

And 1 Gbps would be 1 (Gb) x 1024 (Mb) x 1024 (Kb) x 1024 (bit) = 1,073,741,824 bit per second

 

Now all you have to do is divide those two numbers. The result would be 8 seconds (since bit cancel each other out). So 1 GB @ 1 Gbps should take 8 seconds, which makes sense since 1 Byte = 8 Bit so the number of bits transferred per second is 1/8 of the file size ;)

 

~edit: Don't really have any links at hand. Learned most of that ages ago. But e.g. if you Google something like "file transfer calculator" there's tons of sites available that can do this without having to calculate all of that by hand.

Wow Thanks bro,  yeah I'd already googled "file transfer Calulator", I'd actually been messing around with it ever since my first original post. But unfortunately it doesn't break down into showing the equations that I'm looking for. I'm definitely gonna write down what you've explained and work on some that stuff while trying to find a site that will elaborate on some other in depth detail explainations on how memory storage works. Hell I'll probably look for some online computer Science classes while I'm at it . I mean what fun is it being an Autodidact if your not putting it to good use.  

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