Software for mass copy to external SSD

David Lal · Sep 18, 2023

Scott_Eaton said:
Normally I would suggest Macrium for this because it works native from Windows, but it's no longer free. If you're dealing with zillions of smaller files I would suggest trying to clonezilla (offline), or doing a backup and restore.

Scott, yes - apparently from September 1 Macrium Free was retired. There may still be places on the internet whence it can be obtained though. For instance here (perhaps?):

Macrium Reflect Free (Windows)

A disk cloning software to keep your personal documents safe

macrium-reflect-free.en.uptodown.com

Version 8 of Macrium is being offered as a free 30 day trial too. Fortunately, I personally still have the full installation files for a late version. Macrium has saved my bacon so many times I'd probably be prepared to get a paid version if I needed it.

Henry Richardson · Sep 18, 2023

TomFid said:
Henry Richardson said:

Can one use cloning software to copy all the data from an NTFS SSD to an exFAT SSD

Click to expand...

Cloning replicates the partition structure and wipes the target, so I think that's a no.

I have two external 2tb SSDs with the same thing on them. One is NTFS and one is exFAT. I was planning to use the NTFS 2tb SSD to copy to the 4tb exFAT SSD, but I can use the 2tb exFAT SSD instead.

I wanted to use the NTFS SSD because I am actively using the exFAT SSD on another computer so I prefer not to tie it up for hours or days doing the copy to the 4tb. If cloning only takes an hour though then that would be okay. I have found that robocopy will take days. :-(

By the way, with Macrium Reflect 8 do I choose clone or image in this case of a data SSD?

David Lal · Sep 18, 2023

Henry Richardson said:
By the way, with Macrium Reflect 8 do I choose clone or image in this case of a data SSD?

I'd say clone because a Macrium image is compressed. Such images can be mounted as drives in Windows File Explorer but you probably want to get more directly at your data?

Henry Richardson · Sep 18, 2023

David Lal said:
Henry Richardson said:

Robocopy has been going for 70 minutes and it has copied 200mb. At this rate it is going to take a very, very long time.

Click to expand...

I'd abandon that approach and try cloning. Macrium Reflect is free and works well (not just on system drives). Aomei also has a free cloning offering, possibly more powerful than Macrium but a more difficult interface.

My Macrium drive imaging (admittedly not quite the same thing, but similar) takes about 12 minutes to do ± 50gb from a HDD to an external HDD via a USB3 port. I do not have a fancy superfast PC.

Last night before starting robocopy I installed the trial of Macrium Reflect 8.1. Unfortunately when I try to use it to make an image of the exFAT 2tb SSD to the exFAT 4tb SSD I get an error. Here are the messages I get:

I looked at the log, but it has no additional info. It just says the same thing as the error in red above.

Henry Richardson · Sep 18, 2023

David Lal said:
Henry Richardson said:

By the way, with Macrium Reflect 8 do I choose clone or image in this case of a data SSD?

Click to expand...

I'd say clone because a Macrium image is compressed. Such images can be mounted as drives in Windows File Explorer but you probably want to get more directly at your data?

Okay, I tried to make an image and got an error. See my post below. I thought a clone was only for bootable drives, but I have never done this before so my understanding is most likely wrong.

Henry Richardson · Sep 18, 2023

Scott_Eaton said:
If you are trying to move zillions of small files that can take forever because each file typically gets checksum'd before / after moving. Xfer speed can crawl, especially over a network.

However, if the files are really big, then the xfer speed should be limited by the device. If you've only moved 200MB in 70minutes then there's a device issue afoot.

The 1.81tb is files of all sizes from small text files to 20mp raw files (and a small number of bigger files of, say, less than 100mb). I have 358k files on the 2tb SSD.

Scott_Eaton said:
If we've ruled out a device issue (try copying a single large file and see if there's an issue) I will often just clone the entire volume which is the fastest method.

The new SSD seems to be working okay. I have copied stuff to it and also run chkdsk /f on it. SMART also is good.

Scott_Eaton said:
Normally I would suggest Macrium for this because it works native from Windows, but it's no longer free. If you're dealing with zillions of smaller files I would suggest trying to clonezilla (offline), or doing a backup and restore.

I downloaded the Macrium Reflect 8.1 free 30 day trial, but I get an error. See my post about it.

TomFid · Sep 18, 2023

Henry Richardson said:
I started robocopy last night using this command line:

robocopy g: h: /e /zb

It has been running for 11 hours and so far 1.2gb has been copied. Whew, this is going to take a long time.

Seems like there must be some bottleneck - this is not normal.

I don't normally use /z or /b, and the docs say those can be performance hogs. Since you're not copying the active boot drive, I don't think you need it, so I'd drop the /zb

I also tend to use

/R:0 /W:0 this turns off the restart/wait cycle, which shouldn't happen when boot or network drives aren't involved.

/LOG:C:\batch\RoboLog.txt

This turns on logging - I check the log later to see if anything got skipped. (Obviously make the path your own.)

Member said:
Member said:

Another easy GUI option is FreeFileSync. It can also verify (if you flip a config switch, https://freefilesync.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5203 ).

Speed is heavily dependent on the specific USB generation, but assuming it's 3.something I would expect single digit hours.

Click to expand...

Both external SSDs are connected to USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports.

This should be fine.

New Wrycuda · Sep 18, 2023

Henry Richardson said:
TomFid said:

Henry Richardson said:

How long would you expect the full copy of 1.81tb to take? I will use this laptop with nothing else running during the copy, internet disabled, and Windows Defender Real-time protection turned off:

Dell laptop, Windows 10 22H2
i7-8565U, 4 cores
32gb RAM

Of course, I know you cannot say exactly. But do you think a single digit number of hours? Many hours? Days?

Click to expand...

I second the recommendation for robocopy, particularly with the /v flag for verification. The verify step roughly doubles time though. It can take a little head-scratching to get a well-tuned command line though. There's a GUI for it, but I remember bouncing off that for some forgotten reason.

Click to expand...

I started robocopy last night using this command line:

robocopy g: h: /e /zb

It has been running for 11 hours and so far 1.2gb has been copied. Whew, this is going to take a long time.

Both external SSDs are connected to USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports.

I thought that “a few hours” would be a reasonable estimate, but I’m not able to test that with my hardware. In my case, it’s SATA SSD to USB 3.2 SSD. (10th Gen. CPU).

I’m not sure if the “multi-threaded” option would work for simple copying, but it might be worth trying (/mt:4 in your case). It certainly accelerates the backup process that I use to add new or changed files to the target. (If you run a Robocopy script on subsequent occasions, it skips existing files and only copies new stuff).

There’s many Robocopy options…

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy

Henry Richardson · Sep 18, 2023

David Lal said:
Henry Richardson said:

By the way, with Macrium Reflect 8 do I choose clone or image in this case of a data SSD?

Click to expand...

I'd say clone because a Macrium image is compressed. Such images can be mounted as drives in Windows File Explorer but you probably want to get more directly at your data?

If I clone a 2tb exFAT SSD to a 4tb exFAT SSD will I still have 4tb or will I lose 2tb of my 4tb SSD?

David Lal · Sep 18, 2023

Henry Richardson said:
If I clone a 2tb exFAT SSD to a 4tb exFAT SSD will I still have 4tb or will I lose 2tb of my 4tb SSD?

With Macrium cloning the cloned partition will be the same size as the source partition. However, there is a (free) utility from Aomei called Partition Assistant which enables resizing a partition without losing any data.

I see your attempt with the Macrium 8 trial failed. I wonder if this was due to some local condition of your kit or a problem with the Macrium trial. One can still get the free version of Macrium here:

Download Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - MajorGeeks

With Macrium Reflect Free Edition you'll be able to easily make an accurate and reliable image of your HDD or individual partitions. Using this image you can restore the entire disk, partition or...

www.majorgeeks.com

I just did it and ended up with a .exe install file of 178,976 bytes. This for a Windows 10, 64bit PC.

Clonezilla, Diskinternals and Aomei Backupper all offer cloning utilities so you are not totally dependent on Macrium for a solution.

Good luck!

gscotten · Sep 18, 2023

David Lal said:
Henry Richardson said:

If I clone a 2tb exFAT SSD to a 4tb exFAT SSD will I still have 4tb or will I lose 2tb of my 4tb SSD?

Click to expand...

With Macrium cloning the cloned partition will be the same size as the source partition. However, there is a (free) utility from Aomei called Partition Assistant which enables resizing a partition without losing any data.

Macrium Free lets you set the target partition size when cloning.

Henry Richardson · Sep 18, 2023

David Lal said:
I'd say clone because a Macrium image is compressed. Such images can be mounted as drives in Windows File Explorer but you probably want to get more directly at your data?

The clone failed too. :-(

Did I do something wrong? Error messages not particularly helpful.

Carey Brown · Sep 18, 2023

TomV1 said:
TomFid said:

Henry Richardson said:

Robert Zanatta said:

Henry Richardson said:

What software do you use to do a mass copy of 1.81tb from an external 2tb SSD to an external 4tb SSD? Performance and data integrity are both important.

Click to expand...

If the target drive is new to I'd probably clone it. Otherwise Robocopy works.

It'll take an hour.

Click to expand...

Robocopy has been going for 70 minutes and it has copied 200mb. At this rate it is going to take a very, very long time.

Click to expand...

What's the connection? If it's USB2, it's going to take a long time no matter what.

Another thing that can bog down robocopy is permission issues that cause a lot of retries.

Click to expand...

I agree. With large drives you have to be using USB3. I backup my 1.8 TB NVME to an external HDD connected to USB3. For my photo files I get 150- 200MB/s transfer speeds.

My HDD is SATA 3, 7200 rpm.

This is somewhere around 2 hours max for a full 1.8 TB.

I just use Win Explorer for the backup.

I'm guessing that a transfer from one external drive to another involves two steps: transfer from 'A' to memory, then transfer from memory to 'B'. This, in theory , would result in half the anticipated transfer rate. Halving it again if you turn on verification. For large files you might expect 150MBps so 1/4 of that is 37.5MBps which is SLOW and that's for LARGE files which I'm betting is the minority of your files.

Henry Richardson · Sep 18, 2023

David Lal said:
Henry Richardson said:

If I clone a 2tb exFAT SSD to a 4tb exFAT SSD will I still have 4tb or will I lose 2tb of my 4tb SSD?

Click to expand...

With Macrium cloning the cloned partition will be the same size as the source partition. However, there is a (free) utility from Aomei called Partition Assistant which enables resizing a partition without losing any data.

I see your attempt with the Macrium 8 trial failed. I wonder if this was due to some local condition of your kit or a problem with the Macrium trial. One can still get the free version of Macrium here:

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/macrium_reflect_free_edition.html

I just did it and ended up with a .exe install file of 178,976 bytes. This for a Windows 10, 64bit PC.

Clonezilla, Diskinternals and Aomei Backupper all offer cloning utilities so you are not totally dependent on Macrium for a solution.

It appears clonezilla is just for Linux, right? I am on Windows.

Clonezilla - Downloads

David Lal said:
Good luck!

Thank you. Up until now my luck has all been bad though.

Robert Zanatta · Sep 18, 2023

Henry Richardson said:
David Lal said:

Henry Richardson said:

Robocopy has been going for 70 minutes and it has copied 200mb. At this rate it is going to take a very, very long time.

Click to expand...

I'd abandon that approach and try cloning. Macrium Reflect is free and works well (not just on system drives). Aomei also has a free cloning offering, possibly more powerful than Macrium but a more difficult interface.

My Macrium drive imaging (admittedly not quite the same thing, but similar) takes about 12 minutes to do ± 50gb from a HDD to an external HDD via a USB3 port. I do not have a fancy superfast PC.

Click to expand...

Last night before starting robocopy I installed the trial of Macrium Reflect 8.1. Unfortunately when I try to use it to make an image of the exFAT 2tb SSD to the exFAT 4tb SSD I get an error. Here are the messages I get:

I looked at the log, but it has no additional info. It just says the same thing as the error in red above.

That can happen if the VSS service isn't running. Check to see if it is enabled.

XiaoDeer · Sep 18, 2023

Henry Richardson said:
It appears clonezilla is just for Linux, right? I am on Windows.

https://clonezilla.org/downloads.php

You boot Clonezilla from a thumb drive. It runs on it's own copy of Linux but it understands and handles Windows, Linux and Mac disks and partitions.

It is very robust and reliable but it has a horrible user interface.

RescueZilla is very similar but has a decent GUI. It's equally solid but much more user friendly.

Robert Zanatta · Sep 18, 2023

Henry Richardson said:
TomFid said:

Henry Richardson said:

How long would you expect the full copy of 1.81tb to take? I will use this laptop with nothing else running during the copy, internet disabled, and Windows Defender Real-time protection turned off:

Dell laptop, Windows 10 22H2
i7-8565U, 4 cores
32gb RAM

Of course, I know you cannot say exactly. But do you think a single digit number of hours? Many hours? Days?

Click to expand...

I second the recommendation for robocopy, particularly with the /v flag for verification. The verify step roughly doubles time though. It can take a little head-scratching to get a well-tuned command line though. There's a GUI for it, but I remember bouncing off that for some forgotten reason.

Click to expand...

I started robocopy last night using this command line:

robocopy g: h: /e /zb

For the new drive, go into it's properties and enable write caching. Also disable 8.3 file name creation of you don't need short file names.

ggeinec · Sep 18, 2023

David Lal said:
David Lal said:

.... snipped ....

Click to expand...

I see your attempt with the Macrium 8 trial failed. I wonder if this was due to some local condition of your kit or a problem with the Macrium trial. One can still get the free version of Macrium here:

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/macrium_reflect_free_edition.html

I just did it and ended up with a .exe install file of 178,976 bytes. This for a Windows 10, 64bit PC.

... snipped ...

I'm curious if anyone recently has run this .exe file from majorgeeks and can confirm whether or not it still allows a download and install of Macrium Reflect Free or if it installs a trial or does something else now . . .

Also, if you download this file from majorgeeks read the Editor's Note toward the bottom of the page before you run it.

Henry Richardson · Sep 18, 2023

Robert Zanatta said:
Henry Richardson said:

TomFid said:

Henry Richardson said:

How long would you expect the full copy of 1.81tb to take? I will use this laptop with nothing else running during the copy, internet disabled, and Windows Defender Real-time protection turned off:

Dell laptop, Windows 10 22H2
i7-8565U, 4 cores
32gb RAM

Of course, I know you cannot say exactly. But do you think a single digit number of hours? Many hours? Days?

Click to expand...

I second the recommendation for robocopy, particularly with the /v flag for verification. The verify step roughly doubles time though. It can take a little head-scratching to get a well-tuned command line though. There's a GUI for it, but I remember bouncing off that for some forgotten reason.

Click to expand...

I started robocopy last night using this command line:

robocopy g: h: /e /zb

Click to expand...

For the new drive, go into it's properties and enable write caching. Also disable 8.3 file name creation of you don't need short file names.

That is helping a lot. Thank you. Here is the Task Manager doing the copy now after doing that. Before doing it the graph at the bottom the label at the top right was just at 100Kb/s to 500Kb/s. In just 6 minutes it has copied 10gb. Many times more than hours and hours of copying before had managed.

David Lal · Sep 18, 2023

gscotten said:
David Lal said:

Henry Richardson said:

If I clone a 2tb exFAT SSD to a 4tb exFAT SSD will I still have 4tb or will I lose 2tb of my 4tb SSD?

Click to expand...

With Macrium cloning the cloned partition will be the same size as the source partition. However, there is a (free) utility from Aomei called Partition Assistant which enables resizing a partition without losing any data.

Click to expand...

Macrium Free lets you set the target partition size when cloning.

Does it George? That's good news. I am sure the last time I did a clone with Macrium I was not able to do that. It's either new (and welcome) functionality or something I missed.

Software for mass copy to external SSD

Forum Pro

Henry Richardson

Guest

Forum Pro

Henry Richardson

Guest

Henry Richardson

Guest

Henry Richardson

Guest

Senior Member

Senior Member

Henry Richardson

Guest

Forum Pro

Senior Member

Henry Richardson

Guest

Senior Member

Henry Richardson

Guest

Senior Member

Leading Member

Senior Member

Leading Member

Henry Richardson

Guest

Forum Pro

Similar threads

Keyboard shortcuts