Is there a way to limit file transfer speeds locally?

[Eat Soup]

I have an old hard drive (10+ years) that is showing its age and it contains important data. I am planning to transfer the files to a new hard drive to back it up, but at the same time I wish to slow down the transfer speeds as not to put too much stress on the old hard drive. Is there any software that I can use to artificially limit the transfer speed on windows 10? If so, what transfer speeds would be a safe option (I have the entire weekend to transfer 500 GB)?

[Electronics Wizardy]

I have never seen high speeds cause more stress, I wouldn't worry about that here.

 

A drive is either active or its not, in order to slow it down, you would limit the amount of operations send to the drive

 

 

DDrescue is a great program for getting every byte from a failing drive, and will skip bad parts of the drive, and try them again later.

[SEAL62]

Can't really say anything about safe transfer speeds without any knowledge of the drive and its conditon. HDDs are wearing parts that usually last for about 4-5 years (internal HDDs with normal use case scenario) so that you have a 10+ years old drive with not backed up, important data on it just blows my mind. I would stongly advise you to copy those important files from that drive as soon as possible and take a look at how you back things up.

[Ar558a]

As Far as I know speed wouldn't make much difference it's gonna be age, power cycles, physical wear and tear, TB written etc that will effect failure. If I were you I would copy it all off as quickly as you can the less time taken to get it off, the lower the risk.

[ProjectBox153]

17 minutes ago, SEAL62 said:

Can't really say anything about safe transfer speeds without any knowledge of the drive and its conditon. HDDs are wearing parts that usually last for about 4-5 years (internal HDDs with normal use case scenario) so that you have a 10+ years old drive with not backed up, important data on it just blows my mind. I would stongly advise you to copy those important files from that drive as soon as possible and take a look at how you back things up.

From my experience 4-5 years is rather short for a normal drive. A lot of my drives are around the 10 year range if not older.

[SEAL62]

Just now, ProjectBox153 said:

From my experience 4-5 years is rather short for a normal drive. A lot of my drives are around the 10 year range if not older.

just google "average life span of hard drives" and read basically any article concerning that topic. 4-5 years is pretty generous lifespan.

[ProjectBox153]

1 minute ago, SEAL62 said:

just google "average life span of hard drives" and read basically any article concerning that topic. 4-5 years is pretty generous lifespan.

Uhhh, ok. Basically all of my computing experience, as well as my own collection of hard drives (most of which work, btw), disagrees with that. One of my servers next to me has 2 drives that are over 15 years old, and they're still doing great. 

[SEAL62]

2 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

Uhhh, ok. Basically all of my computing experience, as well as my own collection of hard drives (most of which work, btw), disagrees with that. One of my servers next to me has 2 drives that are over 15 years old, and they're still doing great. 

15 year old drives in a server?! I can't even believe that, that's just crazy

[ProjectBox153]

12 minutes ago, SEAL62 said:

15 year old drives in a server?! I can't even believe that, that's just crazy

Is it smart? No. Is it fine for what I need? Yep. My point is that a hard drive should last more than a few years, and they usually do.