Moving massive amounts of data, where's the bottleneck? (PC Based)
 

I want to copy 2 terabytes of data from a 2 external 1TB Hdd's to a single 2TB external HDD.
I'd like to use an old laptop so it doesn't tie-up my main desktop

Where is my bottleneck?

USB 2.0 Speed
Speed of the external HDD
Processor of the laptop?
This isn't something I do on a regular basis, so if it takes 24 hours, it takes 24 hours.

Re: Moving massive amounts of data, where's the bottleneck? (PC Based)
 

USB 2.0 would be the main issue constraining throughput.

Re: Moving massive amounts of data, where's the bottleneck? (PC Based)
 

Definitely the USB2 connection.

If you have USB3 connections on a computer, purchase a USB3 (or eSATA etc) hard drive dock. Then dismantle the USB2 external hard drives and physically transfer them to the USB3 dock(s) ... achieving a 5x speed boost for that device.

Andrew

Re: Moving massive amounts of data, where's the bottleneck? (PC Based)
 

+1 - USB2.0 is the bottleneck in that list.

Re: Moving massive amounts of data, where's the bottleneck? (PC Based)
 

If it's a 3.5 inch external drive, it probably has a SATA drive inside. Disassemble the external drive and plug it into your desktop computer directly (skip the laptop). This will let the drives talk to each other directly on the SATA bus and will bypass the CPU-bound USB bus.

Retain the chassis from the external drives; you never know when you might need a SATA to USB interface.