Question External USB drive speeds

[Junglist]

I will soon be building a PC for the first time. It will be for my elderly parent's who also require an external back-up drive. They often turn the PC on for a short period only, so I want to spec a fast external drive so the back-ups will complete. Their current PC uses Windows 10 and is backing up using the Windows 7 back-up and restore feature. My knowledge of components is limited, but I assume I need to take the following things into consideration to ensure fast data transfer to an external drive:

• Internal drive read speed - Presumably this will be the first potential bottleneck.
• USB standard - I understand USB4 is the latest and greatest.
• External drive write speed - Presumably there's no point this being any faster than the internal drive.
• Back-up software - Does this affect performance?

The different units used to rate data transfer speed are confusing but I understand that although USB4 is rated as 40GB/s, that speed is not achievable due to 'overheads'. I'd like to understand speed in terms of how long it would take to back-up a 1GB file. The 'SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD' claims 3700MB/s write speeds. Is this the actual speed achievable and if so would an internal drive capable of at least this read speed be sufficient to utilize a speedy back-up? Are any of the other PC components going to dictate these speeds?

 

[stonjean633]

Those are theoretical speed and nowhere close to reality.

You are trying to backup what? OS drive or just files? Give more context/scenarios so people can advise you further.

 

[Junglist]

I want things to be as trouble free, reliable and as easy to understand as possible, not just for them but also for me. I want to prevent my parent's files being lost through accidental deletion or drive failure. In the event of a boot or drive failure I'd like an easy way of restoring everything back to how it was.

I'm currently considering EaseUS Todo Free Edition to create scheduled monthly C: disk images and daily incremental back-ups. In the event that an emergency disk is required to boot would it be best to create this on a CD? This way the standard boot sequence could be the optical drive before the C: drive, so all they would need to to would be insert the CD to boot from it.

I'm conscious of spending money on a external drive that will never work to it's potential.

 

[Victor M]

3700MB/s write speeds

This rated speed would be copying a single unfragmented file. In real life most files are fragmented, and the source drive would need to seek out each of the sectors involved. Plus you won't be copying just one file, and in so doing the seek time causes delays to the write.

Does EaseUS display a dialog box of some kind to indicate that the backup is currently running? If not, then how can you teach your parents not to turn off the machine while a backup is running.

 

[stonjean633]

I want things to be as trouble free, reliable and as easy to understand as possible, not just for them but also for me. I want to prevent my parent's files being lost through accidental deletion or drive failure. In the event of a boot or drive failure I'd like an easy way of restoring everything back to how it was.

I'm currently considering EaseUS Todo Free Edition to create scheduled monthly C: disk images and daily incremental back-ups. In the event that an emergency disk is required to boot would it be best to create this on a CD? This way the standard boot sequence could be the optical drive before the C: drive, so all they would need to to would be insert the CD to boot from it.

I'm conscious of spending money on a external drive that will never work to it's potential.

I would consider a RAID1 setup if you're building a new PC. That is disk mirroring and nothing to do as it's realtime replication. SSD1 is the same as SSD2. If one fails, it will still work.

You can also proceed with the normal backups but that could be time consuming and possible lost of Data if you forget to do the backup.

 

[Junglist]

This rated speed would be copying a single unfragmented file. In real life most files are fragmented, and the source drive would need to seek out each of the sectors involved. Plus you won't be copying just one file, and in so doing the seek time causes delays to the write.

Fair enough. Do you think USB4 speeds could be utilised for this type of back-up?

Does EaseUS display a dialog box of some kind to indicate that the backup is currently running? If not, then how can you teach your parents not to turn off the machine while a backup is running.

I'm not sure, I'll have to check it out. After some reading, there's lots of criticism of the software so I'm undecided if I will be using it.

I would consider a RAID1 setup if you're building a new PC. That is disk mirroring and nothing to do as it's realtime replication. SSD1 is the same as SSD2. If one fails, it will still work.

With RAID1 if one drive fails to boot and the mirror drive is next in the boot sequence will it then boot automatically, or will bios have to be accessed to boot the mirror drive? Also if Windows is corrupted, it will be corrupted on both drives?

You can also proceed with the normal backups but that could be time consuming and possible lost of Data if you forget to do the backup.

As far as recovering accidently deleted files, there will need to be automatically scheduled back-up software. How time consuming that might be is something that I'm still unclear about.

 

[stonjean633]

Fair enough. Do you think USB4 speeds could be utilised for this type of back-up?


I'm not sure, I'll have to check it out. After some reading, there's lots of criticism of the software so I'm undecided if I will be using it.


With RAID1 if one drive fails to boot and the mirror drive is next in the boot sequence will it then boot automatically, or will bios have to be accessed to boot the mirror drive? Also if Windows is corrupted, it will be corrupted on both drives?


As far as recovering accidently deleted files, there will need to be automatically scheduled back-up software. How time consuming that might be is something that I'm still unclear about.

I ran RAID 1 on my old gaming laptop. It's being configured in BIOS and no need for boot sequence. I never encountered corrupt windows but I know there are protection for that.

 

[Brahman]

Fair enough. Do you think USB4 speeds could be utilised for this type of back-up?

Usb 4 speed of 40 Gbps would equate to around 5000MB Per second which only atop tier nvme 4 type drive can provide. That would also require a high quality nvme drive enclosure with usb 4 compatibility. That's will cost you some money. For back up purpose it is not necessary. Even a usb gen 3.2 capable external nvme can give you around 800 to 1200 Mb per second speed in real life back up scenario. So that the entire back up of 60 to 75 Gb of os drive would be completed in under 2 to 3 minutes in real life. So go for a usb nvme enclosure with 3.2 gen capabilities and buy any nvme gen 3 drive with 1 TB capacity. That will be fast enough and pocket friendly.

 

[Junglist]

Okay, thanks.

 

[brambedkar59]

I ran RAID 1 on my old gaming laptop. It's being configured in BIOS and no need for boot sequence. I never encountered corrupt windows but I know there are protection for that.

Raid is not a backup. It won't protect against file corruption, human error, malware/ransomware, etc. If you accidentally overwrite a presentation with a video of "Never Gonna Give You Up", then you will now have two copies of "Never Gonna Give You Up". Raid only protects against hardware failure.

 

[stonjean633]

Raid is not a backup. It won't protect against file corruption, human error, malware/ransomware, etc. If you accidentally overwrite a presentation with a video of "Never Gonna Give You Up", then you will now have two copies of "Never Gonna Give You Up". Raid only protects against hardware failure.

While it may not be a true backup per se, it does address what the user want to achieve which is availability of data and drive failure. Considering it will be for elders and OP limited skillset, this is like set and forget.

True backups are another option for him if he wants to go that route.

 

[brambedkar59]

While it may not be a true backup per se, it does address what the user want to achieve which is availability of data and drive failure. Considering it will be for elders and OP limited skillset, this is like set and forget.

True backups are another option for him if he wants to go that route.

If OP goes Raid route, he will still need to setup backup drive to protect against accidental delete/overwrite.