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Zaft

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 16, 2009
4,570
4,049
Brooklyn, NY
I would like to transfer my whole iphoto library but it says it will take like 3 days. Anyway to speed up this process? I tried compressing but it says I dont have enough space.
 

DeltaMac

macrumors G5
Jul 30, 2003
13,757
4,583
Delaware
Is your flash drive USB 2.0?
If so, you can replace that with USB 3.0, which will considerably speed up your copy speed (assuming that your Mac also has USB 3.0 ports to support that speed)
Or, you can use some other faster media:
USB hard drive.
USB external SSD, (with an enclosure that supports UASP protocols, which is maximum speed for SSD support)
Or, if you are not too concerned about the money - external SSD connected through thunderbolt.


Are you still using a flash drive formatted NTFS?
You could do a couple of things...
Get a faster NTFS driver (the paid versions are much faster than the free NTFS drivers) such as Tuxera
Or, even better, format that flash drive as MacOS Extended - unless you REALLY need to use it on both OS X and Windows. You do have to erase that flash drive, if you choose to change the format.
 
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Zaft

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 16, 2009
4,570
4,049
Brooklyn, NY
Is your flash drive USB 2.0?
If so, you can replace that with USB 3.0, which will considerably speed up your copy speed (assuming that your Mac also has USB 3.0 ports to support that speed)
Or, you can use some other faster media:
USB hard drive.
USB external SSD, (with an enclosure that supports UASP protocols, which is maximum speed for SSD support)
Or, if you are not too concerned about the money - external SSD connected through thunderbolt.
My computer is a macbook air from Mid 2011, not sure if that has 3.0. The PNY stick I have is 3.0 though.
 

DeltaMac

macrumors G5
Jul 30, 2003
13,757
4,583
Delaware
My computer is a macbook air from Mid 2011, not sure if that has 3.0. The PNY stick I have is 3.0 though.
No USB 3.0 for 2011 models.
You DO have Thunderbolt, which can provide you with USB 3.0 connections, with the right (not cheap!) adapter.
I think your best result will be faster media (SSD, not flash) You will be stuck with USB 2.0 until you replace your MBPro, but flash drives can be slow for a variety of reasons.
One that I mentioned in my last post is NTFS format. If you use that flash drive only on your Mac, you may be better off reformatting to Mac format. NTFS drivers (especially the free ones) can be poor performing (slow). As you can see from the link in my last post, the paid NTFS drivers will significantly improve the read/write speed on your Mac.
 

Zaft

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 16, 2009
4,570
4,049
Brooklyn, NY
No USB 3.0 for 2011 models.
You DO have Thunderbolt, which can provide you with USB 3.0 connections, with the right (not cheap!) adapter.
I think your best result will be faster media (SSD, not flash) You will be stuck with USB 2.0 until you replace your MBPro, but flash drives can be slow for a variety of reasons.
One that I mentioned in my last post is NTFS format. If you use that flash drive only on your Mac, you may be better off reformatting to Mac format. NTFS drivers (especially the free ones) can be poor performing (slow). As you can see from the link in my last post, the paid NTFS drivers will significantly improve the read/write speed on your Mac.
I converted it to EXFAT since I wanted to use it with pc and mac. Thank you for your suggestions, i think I will get an ssd.
 

NoBoMac

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 1, 2014
6,289
4,980
In the past, I've noticed different performance across thumb drives, some fast, others REALLY slow. For example, I have some old PNYs that are fast, while I got some Lexars at a great sale price, but turned out to be REALLY slow (probably why a fire sale on them).

With the slow drives, I noticed that if there are lots of directories that need to be created as part of the copy, it's slow, where copy individual files is relatively quick. So what can help with that is to create a tar file via the command line, and send that to the flash drive:

Code:
cd parent_folder_of_pics
tar cf /Volumes/MyThumbDrive/picture_archive.tar name_of_pictures_folder
 

KALLT

macrumors 603
Sep 23, 2008
5,380
3,415
Three days for 80 GB is absolutely abnormal. I move lots of data around with external disks over USB 2.0 and that amount takes a few hours at most. ExFAT is fine too. If a reformat does not help, then you should get a different disk, but it does not have to be an SSD.
 

IowaLynn

macrumors 68020
Feb 22, 2015
2,145
589
Paragon NTFS is cheap, plus I think it helps to have 2x storage. Those files already have a lot of compression.

Are you using 128GB+ flash drive? Even SSD would be cheap and easily bus powered My WD Passport is new USB3 but abysmally slow so yes I use it for T-Mobile backups but use 250 and 509GB SSD for clone and storage.

PS: no USB3 just USB2
http://www.everymac.com/app/

While USB3 and TB rolled out in 2011 it had a rough start as did SATA3 chipset and interface.
 
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Zaft

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 16, 2009
4,570
4,049
Brooklyn, NY
Paragon NTFS is cheap, plus I think it helps to have 2x storage. Those files already have a lot of compression.

Are you using 128GB+ flash drive? Even SSD would be cheap and easily bus powered My WD Passport is new USB3 but abysmally slow so yes I use it for T-Mobile backups but use 250 and 509GB SSD for clone and storage.

PS: no USB3 just USB2
http://www.everymac.com/app/

While USB3 and TB rolled out in 2011 it had a rough start as did SATA3 chipset and interface.
Here is the flash drive I am using
 

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Shirasaki

macrumors P6
May 16, 2015
16,263
11,764
HFS+ format is a great choice, even if you want to use it on PC. (Just install Paragon HFS+ or similar drivers to access it)
NTFS is also great.
If you have enough money, as other members says, go and buy a thunderbolt SSD ($600-$900/ea). This would solve your problem in a long run. ;)
 
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