Need to transfer 3.5Tb of data, Which method is better

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anoopbhopal

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Jul 8, 2014
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I need to move a lot of data onto my new freenas build. I was wondering if one method would be better than the other, but not really sure so if someone could offer some advice, it would help clear things up.

My freenas box is connected to my network with a share created, so one option is just to cut/copy and paste into the network share. Network switch is Gigabit and drives are 7200rpm so speeds should hopefully average around 60/70 Mb's per second.

Freenas also offers a disk import option where you connect the disk you want to take data from directly onto the motherboard using sata, then just transfer from disk to disk using sata. This obviously means I need to install the hdd into the server and then remove it afterwords.

My question is, would one method be any better than the other. Should I copy through network or through sata. Would it even matter?

Thanks
 
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Phil-uk
Disk to disk will be quicker but as you say, more work. If you are not time limited then why not go the easy route and just copy over the network, start it off and just let it run overnight until it's done.
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Phil-uk

Phil-uk

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Disk to disk will be quicker but as you say, more work. If you are not time limited then why not go the easy route and just copy over the network, start it off and just let it run overnight until it's done.
 
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Murissokah

Murissokah

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Exactly. It's really a matter of whether the transfer rate through the file share is acceptable to you. If it is, there is no need to go through all that extra trouble (and also extra chance of something going wrong).

The offside is that you need your computer to be reliably powered, connected and working during this time, so if you aren't confident in that (getting some BSODs recently?) then it might pay off to attach the disk directly.
 
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anoopbhopal

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Thank you very much for all your thoughts guys. I had a feeling there wont be much speed difference between the two. My first call was to just transfer everything over lan, but just wasn't sure that when moving or copying a large amount of data from hdd to hdd would be best done through sata connected directly to motherboard.

If it's safe enough to transfer around 3.5Tb worth of data through my lan then thats what I'll be doing.

Would anyone recommend using 3rd party copying program or just use windows 7 Ultimate copy utility? The data I will be moving is important to me so I would just like to do this as error free as possible without corrupting data.

Cheers

 
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jsmithepa

jsmithepa

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First off, think twice before using cut&pate, Windows doesn't preserve the timestamp meta fields. I've found timestamp fields on files/folders very useful, sometimes I forget where my stuff are, forgot where, even what name, but I remember I created that file November 2013, so I ask search to show me stuff from that time and BAM!

Another thing is, if those are important data to you, you probably want verification. Cut&Paste doesn't verify. Real verification means after write, it reads back and compare. It will take more time but it's a once off thing. I use TeraCopy (free) but there are others.
 
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