Speed comparison image creation slaveHD vs USB2HD

I did a comparison of the image creation speed on an internal slave drive as opposed to USB2 Maxtor OneTouch external drive.

My desktop uses a 1.8 GHz Celeron processor. Creating an image on an internal slave HD took 12.68 min/6.736 GB or 1.88 min/GB (normal compression).

My laptop uses a 2.4 GHz Celeron processor. Creating an image on a USB2 Maxtor OneTouch external HD took 25.82 min/4.909 GB or 5.26 min/GB (normal compression).

In other words, image creation is 2.8 times faster on an internal drive as opposed to an external drive, even though the laptop has a processor speed 1.33 times that of the desktop.

Would restoring an image show a similar difference?

 

Hello dld,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Acronis performance depends on the combination of the following factors: hard disk drive speed, backup media speed, backup compression level selected and CPU speed. However, slow backup media or high backup compression level can significantly affect the performance. The fastest and most safe media are hard disk drives or network storage. But you must consider that hard disk drives and other external devises connected to computer via USB are limited by the USB transfer rate, which is generally slow.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Thanks for the information Irina.

 

Furthermore, External disks, by default, are optimized for quick removal... translated into english, that means, write-cache is off. This alone drops speed by up to 50%, but is secure it the USB link were to fail for any reason.

Try turning it on for kicks, and test speed. It won't be up to IDE or SCSI direct speeds, but it'll improve a lot!