How fast should an external drive be? Please see the below table to compare the maximum performance of each interface. External drive Internal drive USB 1.1 Up to 12 Mbits/sec UltraATA 100 Up to 100 Mbytes/sec USB 2.0 Up to 480 Mbits/sec Serial ATA 1.5 Up to 1.5 Gbits/sec USB 3.0 Up to 4.8 Gbits/sec SATA 3.0 Up to 3.0 Gbits/sec SATA 6.0 Up to 6.0 Gbits/sec 1394a (Firewire 400) Up to 400 Mbits/sec Up to 1.5, 3.0, 6.0, or 1394b (Firewire 800) Up to 800 Mbits/sec Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) 12.0 Gbits/sec eSATA Up to 1.5 or 3.0 Gbits/sec Thunderbolt Up to 10 Gbits/sec Please note carefully not only the numbers, but also the units of measurement. This table shows how much maximum total bandwidth is available per bus for each technology. Advertised transfer rates are based on the fastest speed at which the drive can send data back and forth across the cable (or bus) from the drive buffer. Data transfer will go as fast as the slowest device or bus As technology progresses and newer, faster interfaces are developed, a user can have a collection of devices of varying interfaces, whose top speeds can vary widely. The computer will move data during a given transfer as quickly as it can, taking into account the abilities of all the devices involved in the transfer: the source disk the interface over which the data is moving the destination disk It may be that the source disk is newer and can push data faster than the destination disk can write it. Example: Backing up the data contained on a Serial ATA 6.0 drive to an external drive equipped with a USB 2.0 interface. The Serial ATA drive and interface are faster than USB 2.0, so the USB 2.0 drive and interface are the "bottleneck". It may be that the destination disk and the interface can move and write data faster than the source disk can send it. Example: Backing up the data contained on a Serial ATA 3.0 drive to an external drive equipped with a Thunderbolt interface. The Thunderbolt interface is faster than SATA 3.0, so the SATA 3.0 drive and interface are the "bottleneck". Burst transfer rate vs. Sustained transfer rate Many hard drive users mistake the "burst transfer rate" in the table above for what they can expect to see in real-world performance. This leads almost invariably to disappointment when their USB external hard drive does not transfer data at 50 MB/sec or their SATA internal drive at 300 MB/sec. This is because no storage device will have all of this "potential" bandwidth available for data transfers. Some of the bandwidth will be shared with other devices on the bus and some will be consumed by commands and interface protocol overhead. Other limitations can include the transfer rate that is possible given the bus (ie, USB, SATA, Thunderbolt). It is also worth noting that poor or slow drive performance is usually caused by a system configuration factor. It is very rare that poor performance is directly related to the drive. In many cases, perceived poor drive performance is usually attributed to the results of a benchmark test. Benchmark results are very system-dependent and the results can vary from system to system. For this reason, Seagate cannot provide a single sustained transfer rate specification for any drive. Other Tips for Increasing Performance Try connecting USB external drives into the various USB ports on your computer and experiment with data transfers via each port. It may be that some of the ports on the computer use older USB hardware. For best performance, do not connect external drives to USB hubs, switches, or extension cables. Defragment the disk drive (not for use with solid state drives). The drive's partition can become fragmented in the course of normal usage. Running the defrag utility in Windows can often improve the performance of a slow drive by consolidating scattered files and data, making it easier to access more quickly. Run Seatools for Windows on the drive. Run checkdisk on the drive (not for use with solid state drives). Replace your USB cable with a known-good cable. Empty the recycle bin/trash can, especially if the drive has been used for a while. Old data removed from the drive leaves behind a footprint on the drive, which can negatively affect performance. Many computers have numerous programs running in the background that are occupying system resources. Shut down some or many of the background programs. Please consult Microsoft Support (for 8/7/Vista) (for XP) for directions on disabling background programs at computer startup. Please see this Microsoft Support article for directions on using the Windows Task Manager to end processes. Boot to Safe Mode and try a data transfer to see if that increases the performance. My drive occasionally gives a $Mft error. Unfortunately, $Mft errors usually indicate a corrupted partition. Please follow these steps: 1. Troubleshoot the partition. 1. Backup the data on the drive (if it is not already backed up). 2. If this is not possible, use File Recovery for Windows to recover the data (if necessary). 3. Once complete, or if the data was already backed up, use "chkdsk /f" to try to repair the partition. Also see Document ID: 184611 for more information. 2. These errors are also sometimes seen in conjunction with delayed write failures. 3. Confirm that the external drive you have is supported in the operating system you have. For example, no external drives are supported in Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server, or Windows 2008 Server. A drive connected to a Server computer like this might indeed work for a while, even a great while. But often problems like the $Mft error occur. So, use the external drive on a different, supported operating system. See Document ID: 202393 - Seagate and Maxtor Compatibility Chart for Windows Vista and Document ID: 211931 - Will my drive work with Windows 7? 4. This error sometimes means that the drive itself is failing. Use Seatools for Windows or the drive's bundled diagnostic software to test it. Optional diagnostic software tutorials: o Seagate FreeAgent Pro o Seagate FreeAgent Go Moving Data Between Two Systems Using an External Hard Drive (for MacOS) In most cases you can use your external hard drive to copy data from one computer to another. It is recommended that you only copy data (i.e. pictures, documents, music, etc.) and not applications. Applications will not function when they are copied to a different system. Also, please note there may be a file system compatibility issue. Please see the "File system compatibility between operating systems" section below. To copy the data to the external hard drive: There are four main ways to save data (or "backup") to your external drive: manually (using the copy & paste or the drag & drop method), creating image/clone backups, using a backup software, and using backup programs included within Windows or MacOS. To backup your data manually, please see Document ID: 206295 for instructions, Remember that you may always backup manually, whether or not you are also using a backup software. Many Seagate and Maxtor-brand drives include backup programs, and you may use these as well as manual methods to perform backups. To use a backup software, simply install the software that came with your drive and configure the backup to run when you launch it or on a scheduled basis. See our How To section for how-to videos and other resources to help you set up your backup program. See Document ID: 201413 for a list of programs by drive model. To use MacOS native backup systems like Time Machine, please check with their manufacturer documentation. Here are some examples: o Apple Time Machine 101 - Seagate Style o MacOS Time Machine File system compatibility between operating systems Windows OS to MacOS: The GoFlex line of drives includes an NTFS driver, which can make NTFS file systems usable in MacOS. See Document ID: 219103 for more information. This is the best solution Seagate offers for transferring data between Windows and Mac computers. You may also format your external drive into FAT32 for use between Windows and Mac computers. See Document ID: 200895 for instructions. It is only possible to read FAT and FAT32 formatted drives in a Macintosh with OS 10.2 or earlier. Using a FAT32 formatted drive within the Macintosh environment is only recommended for a short period of time to transfer data. Data corruption will possibly occur when using FAT32 over an extended period of time in a Macintosh. Also keep in mind, that you will have a 4 GB file transfer limitation. Do not use NTFS formatted drives. For non-GoFlex drives, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther or later works with local NTFS-formatted volumes, but the volume will be read-only. You will be able to copy data from, but not to, the external hard drive. With FAT32, it is recommended that the volume/partition size of the external hard drive not exceed 32 GB. If you have an NTFS formatted disk, you must use another method to transfer the data from the Mac computer to the NTFS formatted external drive. Please also see the following Apple article: How to transfer data from a PC to a Macintosh Macintosh OS to Windows OS: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex drives includes the Paragon driver, which can make NTFS file systems usable in MacOS.