Question Transfer data from external drive to internal backup drive ?

[rgh43]

I need to transfer data from one hard drive to another easily & quickly. From an external drive to an Internal one. Any ideas how to do this faster than using the hi-lite copy to paste it into the drive Drag & drop any faster or any ideas other than spending a few hours watching my pc do it slowly. A few yrs ago I did copy my Hard with my operating system to my new M2 drive with no problems and it as I remember it was pretty quick. Don't remember the free download program I used to do that.

 

[Moonstick2]

You need to provide a lot more information: the drive you're copying from and the destination drive; what's on the destination drive already in terms of files and partitions and free space; the same for any other internal disks; how much data you're talking about; what kind of data it is (e.g. thousands of different files or a few large ones; what you have backups of.

The simplistic answer is that cloning is significantly faster than copy/paste; but it's also a lot easier to get wrong meaning needing to reinstall everything or even losing data permanently, so unless you know exactly what you're doing (and given you're asking the question in the first place...) you probably need specific instructions, which require all the above.

 

[Ralston18]

Agree, more information needed.

Consider some simple scripts to execute the transfers.

Powershell is an excellent tool for creating scripts satisfying such requirements.

Google "Powershell scripts to transfer files".

Many links, tutorials, and examples.

Co-Pilot even generated a script. I did not (full disclosure) test the script.

Start simple and work upwards from there. The advantage being that you can can customize the script, know it, understand it, and be able to change or update it when necessary. You have (versus some 3rd party apps) full control.

As always, ensure that all important data is backed up at least 2 x to locations away from the host drives in question.

Verify that the backed up data is recoverable and readable.

 

[Misgar]

From an external drive to an Internal one.

If your internal drive is a heavily used SMR (shingle magnetic recording) hard disk then it's going to run slowly, especially if you're transferring thousands or tens of thousands of (small) files. That's why I stick to CMR/PMR drives.

The older the drive, the smaller the capacity, the slower the transfer rate. I have some 8TB Toshiba hard disks and they start off at 250MB/s. Much older 500GB laptop drives start at 80MB/s.

any ideas other than spending a few hours watching my pc do it slowly.

Do something else.

Watch TV. Go out to the shops. Chat to some friends.

Start the backup just before you turn in at night. It should be finished by the time you wake up.