Faster Copy using USB 2.0 Interface

[televisi]

Hi All,
Need your opinion here;
From time to time I'm dealing with customers who only have USB 2.0 in their machine; and most of the time, prior doing some maintenance I need to do some backup.

Now, I have USB 2.0 portable external HDD as a backup media (I even have 7200 RPM 2.5" drive, some might say this bit overkill, but I don't want to risk 5400 RPM hardware as the bottleneck).

But as you already know, USB 2.0 max speed within windows is 25-35MB/s; and this is sloww.... especially if I need to backup hundred GBs – TBs of data.

What I need is:
- Simple fast interface (i.e. no need to open Casing and attach to the customer's SATA/IDE interface)
- I've been thinking, how about connecting dual USB ports and 'increase' the USB 2.0 speed (I've googled this but no one done this)
- How about other device that utilise USB 2.0? (such as External Tape Backup?)

Thanks all!!

Ps: As most users only have USB 2.0, so other interface such as Firewire/Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 is not an option

 

[unksol]

you can't use 2 USB ports to increase bandwidth, it applies to the entire bus. You can't increase the transfer rate at all by using any sort of device. it is what it is.

The only practical way to do this is to remove their drive from their machine and connect it to yours via another interface, preferably an esata dock, or connect to their SATA bus. either way if all they have is USB 2.0 and you need to backup a terabyte of data you are going to have to open the case, or twiddle your thumbs for 20 hours.

If you are actually servicing machines, and you need to do a backup of a large drive there is no reason not to remove the drive, connect it to your machine, and take an image.

There are also VERY VERY few instances where you should ever be backing up a users entire harddrive to your personal drive, pretty much only when changing the OS, a harddrive is failing, or possibly a virus, definitely not routine maintenance and it definitely shouldn't be being done without their explicitly consent

 

[televisi]

preferably an esata dock

Thanks for the reply!
As I'm currently using Macbook Pro (I know, you might scream, why not normal laptop with USB 3.0 / eSATA), and MBP only has either Thunderbolt / USB 2.0;

Does it mean I have to purchase:
- IDE/SATA to Thunderbolt with MBP
or
- IDE/SATA to eSATA and use other laptop that has eSATA plugs

 

[unksol]

Thunderbolt is fine, and actually better if using a laptop since you can connect more than one external drive using it. it just costs more, and most users don't have it, hence why I said esata.its much more flexible

doing that though you'll have to either have space on your MacBook pro drive to do the backup(unlikely since 2.5 drives can't go as big as 3.5 drives), or you'll need an external thunderbolt SATA drive, preferably at least 3TB since that's the biggest drive you should encounter, in addition to the SATA thunderbolt dock.

I'm not sure if they make IDE thunderbolt docks, but IDE drives are pretty rare now, and they are usually much smaller than SATA drives, so you could probably get by with a USB2.0 IDE cable/dock if necessary