Transferring files efficiently

[Serpentine]

Ok guys, so I'm finally biting the bullet and starting to move my files from my old single drive laptop onto my new desktop rig. However I'm wondering what the best way to do it would be? Should I compress large groups of similar files into .zip files and just throw them onto my external SSD before extracting them to the correct location on my desktop, or skip the compression entirely and move the raw files? I also have access to microsoft onedrive, but I'm not sure if that will be bottlenecked by my internet more than the SSD would be by its transfer speed. 

 

The files are a range of things from photos to PDFs to university essays, if that matters at all. And I assume just pulling the SSD out of my laptop and throwing it into the desktop won't do anything productive because of the operating system that's still loaded onto it. 

[Cryosec]

You could connect the two devices directly with an ethernet cable. You can get from 10MB/s to 100MB/s transfer speed.

That's what I did with mine

[Samfisher]

No point zipping if it's gonna take longer than to transfer the folder wholesale.  Transferring a compressed folder still moves the file one by one internally.

[manikyath]

if both sides have gigabit lan, and if you have a gigabit switch, a samba share will be the way to go.

 

its both decently fast, easy to set up, and you can just drag and let it do its thing even if it takes overnight

[TidaLWaveZ]

Just plug both drives into the same computer and move the files from one drive to another.

 

The only limiting factor here is going to be your the speed of your drive.

[Serpentine]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

if both sides have gigabit lan, and if you have a gigabit switch, a samba share will be the way to go.

 

its both decently fast, easy to set up, and you can just drag and let it do its thing even if it takes overnight

The laptop definitely doesn't have it, and I don't have a gigabit switch. Can't really afford to be buying more hardware tbh

[Serpentine]

1 minute ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

Just plug both drives into the same computer and move the files from one drive to another.

 

The only limiting factor here is going to be your the speed of your drive.

Wouldn't the OS on the laptop drive cause some pretty major issues once i plug it into the desktop?

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Serpentine said:

The laptop definitely doesn't have it, and I don't have a gigabit switch. Can't really afford to be buying more hardware tbh

well.. get that gigabit lan going next time you do a network upgrade then, gigabit switches are cheaper than 10/100 ones by now

[mluton]

I would use ViceVersa this logs everything during the file transfer process. Is free for 30 days. I use this for all server data transfers for customers.

http://www.tgrmn.com/

[TidaLWaveZ]

 

7 minutes ago, Serpentine said:

Wouldn't the OS on the laptop drive cause some pretty major issues once i plug it into the desktop?

No, your PC will boot to whichever drive is first on the boot menu.  Then once you're in your OS you can just transfer files.

 

[vanished]

18 minutes ago, Cryosec said:

You could connect the two devices directly with an ethernet cable. You can get from 10MB/s to 100MB/s transfer speed.

That's what I did with mine

This.  Since the speed to copy to the external ssd is not likely much fsster than this, better to do one direct transfer at up to ~110 MBytes/s than one to the ssd at that speed, and then another at hopefully a little more to the new computer.

 

tl;dr I can't think of a better way

[TidaLWaveZ]

sATA 3 is 6 gigabits a second (600MB/s) your SSD/HDD's can not read and write faster than this.  Thus just plugging both drives into the same PC via sATA is going to give you the same maximum read and write speeds as using anything with higher transfer rates.

[vanished]

 

 

2 hours ago, Serpentine said:

The laptop definitely doesn't have it, and I don't have a gigabit switch. Can't really afford to be buying more hardware tbh

Oh, sorry I hadn't seen this when I commented (above).  I didn't realize the machine was that old...

In that case, I might just stand by my suggestion anyways, but I will explain it.  If you don't have gigabit lan, I'm willing to bet you also don't have USB 3, or possibly even USB 2, and if that's the case (if you don't have USB 2) the 100Mbit lan is still going to be much faster than USB 1.

 

The other option would be taking the drive out of the machine and putting it in the new computer you are copying the files to, as suggested:

2 hours ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

sATA 3 is 6 gigabits a second (600MB/s) your SSD/HDD's can not read and write faster than this.  Thus just plugging both drives into the same PC via sATA is going to give you the same maximum read and write speeds as using anything with higher transfer rates.

This is also a great idea honestly - if it works.  It will guarantee you the fastest speed, and perhaps it will be the easiest once both drives are in the new computer, but it will require opening the laptop and pulling the drive out and plugging it into the new computer.  Only you can decide if that sounds hard or not for your situation.

And now the other caveat - if you don't have gigabit lan, I'm willing to bet the internal drive may not even be SATA, so, again, this is a great idea - if it works.  If your drive is IDE, then good luck plugging it into the new computer

 

My last suggestion would be to just pull the files off your backup drive right to the new computer.  Obviously you must have backups of the laptop if there is important stuff on it and it's that old, so that may be the easiest option in the end.

[Yoinkerman]

Just do it over LAN.  Even if its 100mb it won't be that bad

[WkdPaul]

5 hours ago, Samfisher said:

No point zipping if it's gonna take longer than to transfer the folder wholesale.  Transferring a compressed folder still moves the file one by one internally.

That's not how it works ... at all!

 

Transferring one big file will be faster than thousands of small KB sized files. Been there, done that.

 

OP; I would suggest a zip file for any large folder and then an overnight transfer, that's what I did with my desktop when I setup my NAS, my laptop didn't have as much stuff so I just grabbed a USB stick and transferred the files to the NAS from the desktop when I did the overnight transfer.

 

There's lots of options, really depends what you have but I wouldn't suggest doing that over WiFi ... that would be worst than using a USB stick!

[neebuilda]

If you do move it as a zip file, be sure to make a backup first, as there is a chance of file corruption when using zip files.

[Samfisher]

23 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

That's not how it works ... at all!

 

Transferring one big file will be faster than thousands of small KB sized files. Been there, done that.

 

OP; I would suggest a zip file for any large folder and then an overnight transfer, that's what I did with my desktop when I setup my NAS, my laptop didn't have as much stuff so I just grabbed a USB stick and transferred the files to the NAS from the desktop when I did the overnight transfer.

 

There's lots of options, really depends what you have but I wouldn't suggest doing that over WiFi ... that would be worst than using a USB stick!

It doesn't work like that.  Try it out yourself.  Download a 4GB movie file for a test, or some multi hour video on Youtube, then compress a folder of equivalent size setting it to just storage so the size remains the same but it's in a RAR/ZIP/7Z file instead and transfer it over.  The speed difference is immense. Both become single files by your definition.

[WkdPaul]

1 hour ago, Samfisher said:

It doesn't work like that.  Try it out yourself.  Download a 4GB movie file for a test, or some multi hour video on Youtube, then compress a folder of equivalent size setting it to just storage so the size remains the same but it's in a RAR/ZIP/7Z file instead and transfer it over.  The speed difference is immense. Both become single files by your definition.

what are you on about?

 

When transferring a zip file the network (and PCs at both hand) see only one file ... lol are you seriously implying that zip files are opened, transferred, and then re-closed at the other end?