Question USB 3.2 Gen 2 vs 7200 RPM USB HDD

[box o rocks]

I was wondering which of the these two things was the worse bottleneck. If I have a USB portable HDD plugged into a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, is the drive or the USB interface the slower component? What if the drive was only 5400 RPM?
Assume I'm working with various file sizes like backing up a system image for example.

 

[USAFRet]

Does it really matter, especially for "backups"?

Start it and let it run.

For example, a full drive backup of my C (~250GB consumed) with Macrium Reflect, going across a gigabit LAN, to an HDD in my NAS....about 45 mins.

I wouldn't change anything just to make it go 'faster'.

 

[Bob.B]

I was wondering which of the these two things was the worse bottleneck. If I have a USB portable HDD plugged into a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, is the drive or the USB interface the slower component? What if the drive was only 5400 RPM?
Assume I'm working with various file sizes like backing up a system image for example.

The hdd get a ssd if you want to bump it along a little.

 

[box o rocks]

The hdd get a ssd if you want to bump it along a little.

That is exactly what I was wondering... i.e. if it would make a difference to go to a SSD instead of a HDD, or if the USB 3.2 gen 2 was limiting even the HDD. Thank you. I will try that since I have several older SATA SDDs I can use for a test.

 

[USAFRet]

That is exactly what I was wondering... i.e. if it would make a difference to go to a SSD instead of a HDD, or if the USB 3.2 gen 2 was limiting even the HDD. Thank you. I will try that since I have several older SATA SDDs I can use for a test.

In the case of an external backup drive, don't sacrifice size for speed.
How large is your HDD?

 

[boju]

Portability, meaning it'll be moved quite a bit? Could be careful i guess but ssd with no moving parts won't suffer mechanical failures from accidental roughness.

 

[Viking2121]

HDD will never max out a USB 3.2 port as a good 7200rpm HDD can do around 200MB/s sustained, but a sata based SSD can't either as they are only around 600MB/s, the 3.2 port can theoretically do 1250MB/s, I'd expect it to be closer to 1000MB/s in real world.

Good Luck.

 

[mdd1963]

USB 3 gen 2.2 is 10 Gbps, or, a little over a 1 GB/sec transfer rate, which will be viable, for example, with a PCI-e NVME 3,0 or greater SSD in an adapter so connected, assuming what your source/destination is at least that fast and not bottlenecked by the slowest link. (you gain nothing backing up a 7200 rpm drive to an external NVME drive, as you will be limited by the slow source drive's read speeds of 140-200 MB/sec, best case...

A spinning drive is always a slowest link, with typical 5400 RPM drives capable of only about 100-110 MB/sec transfers, if sequential...; so naturally, connecting any spinning drive to a high speed USB interface nets a gain of..well, practically nothing.

 

[box o rocks]

USB 3 gen 2.2 is 10 Gbps, or, a little over a 1 GB/sec transfer rate, which will be viable, for example, with a PCI-e NVME 3,0 or greater SSD in an adapter so connected, assuming what your source/destination is at least that fast and not bottlenecked by the slowest link. (you gain nothing backing up a 7200 rpm drive to an external NVME drive, as you will be limited by the slow source drive's read speeds of 140-200 MB/sec, best case...

A spinning drive is always a slowest link, with typical 5400 RPM drives capable of only about 100-110 MB/sec transfers, if sequential...; so naturally, connecting any spinning drive to a high speed USB interface nets a gain of..well, practically nothing.

Portability, meaning it'll be moved quite a bit? Could be careful i guess but ssd with no moving parts won't suffer mechanical failures from accidental roughness.

Yes. The drives will be moved quite a bit.
Good discussion. I always manage to learn at least one new thing when I'm here.
Hey, would any good quality USB 3 to SATA adapter work OK, or does it have to be a special USB 3.0 Gen 2 adapter? Example

 

[Viking2121]

Yes. The drives will be moved quite a bit.
Good discussion. I always manage to learn at least one new thing when I'm here.
Hey, would any good quality USB 3 to SATA adapter work OK, or does it have to be a special USB 3.0 Gen 2 adapter? Example

Any really, it comes down to quality or features of the product, nothing special you have to worry about, the one in that link will work, It just wont work on a 3.5 inch drive thats all. You can hook it up to a USB 2 as well, but of course will be slower as expected.

 

[mdd1963]

Some adapters (I have one SATA adapter by Sabrent) come with both USB-C to USB-3 cables, and USB-C-USB-C so you can use it wherever with the best speed in case you have a USB-C port and a fast SSD. Likewise, my Orico NVME/USB adapter also came with two cables, one with a USB-3.0 end, and the other USB-C 3.2 at both ends, with CrystalDiskMark sequential testing results reflecting the difference being 840 MB/sec transfers vs. ~1040 MB/sec transfers respectively.