Theoretical File Transfer Limiting Factor?

[corrado33]

Assuming you have unlimited write/read speeds from storage (infinite raid0?), what's the limiting factor for file transfer speeds? Is it software? Is it hardware? The only thing I can think of is CPU clock speed. Eventually the data would transfer so quickly that CPU commands couldn't keep up with it. Then again I'm not particularly knowledgeable about how file transfers work in the silicon, so I'm not sure. Thoughts? Do file transfers use memory? 

 

I was pondering this question as I had just learned that WD "MyBook" drives use some sort of proprietary formatting which makes removing the drive from the external case and putting it into a computer (and grabbing the data) impossible without reformatting, so I was stuck transferring a few TB of data this weekend from an old... USB2 external drive... 35 MB/sec for the win! Ok ok it had firewire and esata, but I had neither an esata cable nor firewire on that particular PC. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Bus speeds will come into play before cpu speed.

 

Rember there is only a 32gb/s link to most raid cards.