I got a new larger storage drive, and to copy it 'copy and paste style' is going to take 10 hours, is there a better way?
In a word: No. edit: Just be glad you're only copying and pasting a Tib of data. Every time I expand my RAID I have to wait 24-30 hours for my server to expand the damn thing.
Nope. As long as it's connected via SATA or something equally fast it'll be limited by the data transfer speed of the hard drive itself. Make sure you're not running something like an antivirus scan or backup at the time though, as that'll slow it down quite a bit.
Download the 30 day trial of Acronis True Image Home 2011, burn it to CD then image the old drive to the new one? Edit: if using Windows 7, it comes with a copy of Robocopy built in. Type "robocopy /?" for options at the command line. You can mirror all files and folders, including empty ones using it. I use it to backup my work laptop, e.g. robocopy <source> <destination> /MIR /PURGE /V /R:10 /W:30 /NFL /NDL /TEE /LOG:<log location> A million times better than copy/cut/paste.
Assuming he's just transferring data that will offer no benefits. The time taken will be due to limitations read or write speeds. Sure it's better if the moving is complicated or you want to mirror, but if the problem is simply the volume of data then copy and paste works just fine.
The time spent figuring out a better method, downloading additional software, making images and so on will probably amount to more than the time taken to just do a standard copy/paste.
Even though this may seem odd, I'd use xcopy to copy that many files. Xcopy has the option to not stop on errors, which is good in one sense, if you leave verbose output off it will then tell you which files it didn't copy.
It is not about the time taken, it is about making sure the integrity of the files/folders is retained. In addition, a copy/paste will change the file/folder dates to the date of the copy. A cut/paste will keep the file attributes, including security permissions, but if it fails half way through it can be a nightmare to sort out as Windows doesn't neccessarily copy in any particular order when using Windows Explorer. Another problem with such a large copy/paste job is that Windows Explorer can sometimes hang and cause issues. The robocopy option lets you log everything so you know if there have been any errors at the end. It is a much more elegant solution than xcopy as well. It will pause if a file is in use and locked, retrying 30 seconds later (in the example above). You can run it and forget it. You have robocopy on the PC already. If you don't want to learn how to use it, simply use the example command line options I posted earlier, they are setup to mirror one folder structure to another - just edit the location source/destination strings and add a location for the log file. You can remove the "/purge" string, that is in there to remove any files in the destination location that no longer exist in the source.
Rich copy from microsoft. Its a Gui for robo copy. Its very good. If moving large amounts of data around and you want to maintain integrity. Its good if comand line isnt your thing. http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithcombs/archive/2009/03/22/richcopy-bulk-file-copy-tool-released-get-it-here.aspx
Robocopy is the way forward for large transfers. If the folder structure runs really deep explorer will complain about long file path issues and bomb out. It isn't hard to get robocopy syntax worked out.
Well I assume you already have copied the data by now, but in the future, you can always get a spare SATA cable and a screw driver. Crack the external drive case open, connect power and SATA data leads to the drive and your computer, copy the data over through an SATA connection, and then drop it back in the enclosure. This is of course assuming its a USB2 enclosure. If it is eSATA, USB3 or maybe even firewire than you aren't going to save anytime, or little time, by doing that. 10hrs for 1TB sounds like USB2 to me (~30MB/sec). Just think what it would be like over fast ethernet...35-40hrs
