Solved What speed should I expect when moving this from SSD to NVME?

Hi, I was wondering what kind of speeds are normal when moving (not copying) a 176GB folder from SSD to PCIe3 NVME?
The speeds I'm getting are varying between 15MB/sec to 110MB/sec - which I guess is dependent on what file in that folder is being moved?

Still, given that these are not mechanical hard drives, I'm kinda surprised that the estimated time of completion indicated for moving 176GB from SSD to NVME is approximated at 2 hours. Would like to know if this is normal....

Can't say what you should get in speed but I like to keep in mind when copying or moving the whole computer is involved with first copying data into temporary memory then writing that data to the new location, will take time and individual file sizes have effect. Display of the process also takes CPU time.

If you are moving files directly from a SATA 3 SSD to a PCIe 3 NVME then although the NVME will in normal use be much much faster, you'll be restricted to the SATA 3 SSD ability to read those files. Drives also have a cache but I often find that after starting well, the transfer speed plummets once the cache has drained so maybe this is what you are experiencing.

orlando1974 said:

Would like to know if this is normal....

Click to expand...

Normal & expected.

BTW: No difference between copying and moving.
Moving only adds the deletion of what's been copied at the end.

I'd start with a test to see what the read speeds are on your SSD. That's your limiting factor.

The other determining factor will be the types of files. 176GB of small tiny files is going to take a lot more time to copy than say 10 ISO files.

I would expect to see copy times closer to 300MB/sec if you are dealing with numerous large files.

orlando1974 said:

Hi, I was wondering what kind of speeds are normal when moving (not copying) a 176GB folder from SSD to PCIe3 NVME?
The speeds I'm getting are varying between 15MB/sec to 110MB/sec - which I guess is dependent on what file in that folder is being moved?

Still, given that these are not mechanical hard drives, I'm kinda surprised that the estimated time of completion indicated for moving 176GB from SSD to NVME is approximated at 2 hours. Would like to know if this is normal....

Click to expand...

As others say, there are a lot of variables that impact how long it will take, but you can go through hoops and loops trying to speed it up.

In the end, just start to copy files and leave pc copying files overnight.

For starters an NVMe drive IS an SSD. Perhaps you really mean going from a SATA drive to NVMe? So you have SATA Hard drives(HD), SATA SSD drives and NVMe SSD drives. Generally speaking NVMe drives are quite a bit faster than standard SATA SSD drives. SATA SSDs are limited to slightly less than 600 MB/sec(for SATA III).
Now in regards to NVMe transfer speeds this is where it gets complicated. This depends on which specific NVMe drive you're talking about. Also the M.2 socket you're putting it in on a specific motherboard. You've got Gen 3, Gen 4 and the latest Gen 5 NVMe drives. Each being faster. Some NVMe drives come with a type of cache that helps speed up some exclude them to try and keep them cheaper. Depends on the technology used on the motherboard.
And copying speeds often involves the slowest device in the process. For instance copying between two higher speed NVMe drives will be much faster than copying from a fast NVMe SSD drive to a slower SATA SSD as the SATA SSD will be limiting the transfer speed. And transferring to an even slower SATA HDD slower still due to the limitations of the spinner HD.
So it becomes more involved asking simply for speed differences. And to make matters worse Windows own file transfer operations can leave a little to be desired. There have been numerous topics on this forum discussing/comparing transfer speed wild fluctations.

As an example of the speeds here is a screenshot I took testing transfer speeds between 2 Gen4 NVMe drives.

There are other considerations that affect transfer/write speeds. One is existence and amount of cache on a disk which affects writing mostly. Transfer/writing is fastest until cache is filled which means smaller files will write faster but after cache is filled, speed will drop like a rock because it has to be emptied and refilled at same time.
Other is type of files and depends if windows security checks them or not.

So - if files are being transferred between a SATA SSD and a PCIe NVME, can one predict in which "direction" the transfer will be faster?

orlando1974 said:

So - if files are being transferred between a SATA SSD and a PCIe NVME, can one predict in which "direction" the transfer will be faster?

Click to expand...

Direction doesn't matter. Speed is always limited by slower read or write. SATA being slower to read or write, so transfer speed from SATA drive to NVMe is limited by SATA's read speed and transfer from NVMe to SATA limited by SATA's write speed. So, whatever you do, SATA is slower and all depends on it's read/write speed.

orlando1974 said:

So - if files are being transferred between a SATA SSD and a PCIe NVME, can one predict in which "direction" the transfer will be faster?

Click to expand...

The SATA SSD is the weak link in the chain, so to speak. You could have the fastest NVMe drive that's currently available, but you'd still be bound by the max read/write speeds of the SATA drive.