3 ms·

In my experience, it can be faster to figure out how to plug two computers together with a direct Ethernet cable and set up static networking and run netcat or

by rav 4y ago

In my experience, it can be faster to figure out how to plug two computers together with a direct Ethernet cable and set up static networking and run netcat or a Python simple HTTP server to transfer such large amounts of data, than it is to copy it onto the crappy slow USB thumb drive that I have in my keychain. Sure, physically moving the thumb drive from one computer to another takes virtually no time - the bottleneck is getting the bits on and off the thumb drive, which can be quite slow depending on how cheap a thumb drive you happen to have lying around. I would be happy to be able to sustain 100 Mbps (12 MB/s) on transfers to/from my thumb drive!

tracker1 4y ago
Depends strongly on the drive, with a lot of variance, and seedy vendors. You can get effectively NVME over USB. Now, the question is, are you using a 5 or 10mbps (or higher with TB/usb4) connection, supported cable, is there a hub in the way restricting traffic, etc. With most computers, the front ports may or may not be the fastest ports. If there's a front panel USB C connection, that's usually your best bet, then red/yellow ports in the back... Of course, it could be an older device/interface, etc. I kind of hope that with USB5, they standardize on labelling/cable requirements as well as reduce the "optional" bits to at least fall under one of 2-3 umbrella sets of requirements. It's a bit of a mess. All of that said, I have nvme drives over USB that are at least as fast as a SATA connected drive, and generally much faster depending on the port used.
NavinF 4y ago
10gbps and 20gbps USB M.2 enclosures are dirt cheap. I use one (with a 1TB SSD inside) as a flash drive. You can also buy USB SSDs that are smaller than M.2 enclosures but have the full SSD feature set (SMART data, TRIM, etc) just like enclosures. It's not as fast as a USB-C to USB-C cable that can do 40gbps with IP-over-thunderbolt, but good enough for most use cases.

by rav 4y ago

tracker1 4y ago

Depends strongly on the drive, with a lot of variance, and seedy vendors. You can get effectively NVME over USB. Now, the question is, are you using a 5 or 10mbps (or higher with TB/usb4) connection, supported cable, is there a hub in the way restricting traffic, etc. With most computers, the front ports may or may not be the fastest ports. If there's a front panel USB C connection, that's usually your best bet, then red/yellow ports in the back... Of course, it could be an older device/interface, etc. I kind of hope that with USB5, they standardize on labelling/cable requirements as well as reduce the "optional" bits to at least fall under one of 2-3 umbrella sets of requirements. It's a bit of a mess. All of that said, I have nvme drives over USB that are at least as fast as a SATA connected drive, and generally much faster depending on the port used.

NavinF 4y ago

10gbps and 20gbps USB M.2 enclosures are dirt cheap. I use one (with a 1TB SSD inside) as a flash drive. You can also buy USB SSDs that are smaller than M.2 enclosures but have the full SSD feature set (SMART data, TRIM, etc) just like enclosures. It's not as fast as a USB-C to USB-C cable that can do 40gbps with IP-over-thunderbolt, but good enough for most use cases.