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With a data transfer of 50 GB estimated 5 hours, are USB-C claimed speeds inaccurate or to blame?
Disable Specific USB Ports / Restrict Data Transfer from USB PortsUSB3 HDD on an USB2 port vs thunderboltdata transfer for iPad appTransfer Data between MacsTransfer data between two Mac via USB-CConfused about USB-C transfer speeds of latest MacBook ProsUSB 3 data transfer very slow (around 8MB/sec.) - How to find the bottleneck?Transfer speed of USB-C to Lightning on latest iPad Pro 10.5USB-C Charging Speeds / Charger OutputsShould a USB Switch work with late 2018 Macbook Air
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When I bought an 2017 MBP I was under the impression (from Apple and others) that USB-C was the superfast way to transfer data. It has not worked out that way and I am wondering if I misunderstood something.
I am downloading 50gb from the MBP to an external drive and it is showing a time of over 5+ hours left. Isn't this supposed to happen much more quickly???
"USB 3.1 Type-C cables offer a transfer rate of 10Gbps, which is double the transfer speed of USB 3.0 (5 Gbps)" is what one tech site states. Can someone explain what i am missing or doing wrong?

macos usb performance data-transfer
add a comment |
When I bought an 2017 MBP I was under the impression (from Apple and others) that USB-C was the superfast way to transfer data. It has not worked out that way and I am wondering if I misunderstood something.
I am downloading 50gb from the MBP to an external drive and it is showing a time of over 5+ hours left. Isn't this supposed to happen much more quickly???
"USB 3.1 Type-C cables offer a transfer rate of 10Gbps, which is double the transfer speed of USB 3.0 (5 Gbps)" is what one tech site states. Can someone explain what i am missing or doing wrong?

macos usb performance data-transfer
Is your external disk an HDD or SSD?
– jmh
9 hours ago
I believe it is HDD Physical Drive: Device Name: easystore 25FA Media Name: WD easystore 25FA Media Protocol: USB Internal: No Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
– Sizzle
9 hours ago
1
I just noticed that the answer below includes an image from Activity monitor and in the bottom right it shows data read and write speeds. You could also get BlackMagic Speed Test from the App Store to double check your external drive read and write speeds. The app is free.
– jmh
8 hours ago
1
@Sizzle JMH has the real answer, run Black Magic and ask a follow on question with details. Rather than keeping this question morphing with 20 questions and more data a second question linked here would get you more specific help.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
add a comment |
When I bought an 2017 MBP I was under the impression (from Apple and others) that USB-C was the superfast way to transfer data. It has not worked out that way and I am wondering if I misunderstood something.
I am downloading 50gb from the MBP to an external drive and it is showing a time of over 5+ hours left. Isn't this supposed to happen much more quickly???
"USB 3.1 Type-C cables offer a transfer rate of 10Gbps, which is double the transfer speed of USB 3.0 (5 Gbps)" is what one tech site states. Can someone explain what i am missing or doing wrong?

macos usb performance data-transfer
When I bought an 2017 MBP I was under the impression (from Apple and others) that USB-C was the superfast way to transfer data. It has not worked out that way and I am wondering if I misunderstood something.
I am downloading 50gb from the MBP to an external drive and it is showing a time of over 5+ hours left. Isn't this supposed to happen much more quickly???
"USB 3.1 Type-C cables offer a transfer rate of 10Gbps, which is double the transfer speed of USB 3.0 (5 Gbps)" is what one tech site states. Can someone explain what i am missing or doing wrong?

macos usb performance data-transfer
macos usb performance data-transfer
edited 7 hours ago
IconDaemon
12.6k6 gold badges29 silver badges43 bronze badges
12.6k6 gold badges29 silver badges43 bronze badges
asked 9 hours ago
SizzleSizzle
6306 gold badges19 silver badges31 bronze badges
6306 gold badges19 silver badges31 bronze badges
Is your external disk an HDD or SSD?
– jmh
9 hours ago
I believe it is HDD Physical Drive: Device Name: easystore 25FA Media Name: WD easystore 25FA Media Protocol: USB Internal: No Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
– Sizzle
9 hours ago
1
I just noticed that the answer below includes an image from Activity monitor and in the bottom right it shows data read and write speeds. You could also get BlackMagic Speed Test from the App Store to double check your external drive read and write speeds. The app is free.
– jmh
8 hours ago
1
@Sizzle JMH has the real answer, run Black Magic and ask a follow on question with details. Rather than keeping this question morphing with 20 questions and more data a second question linked here would get you more specific help.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
add a comment |
Is your external disk an HDD or SSD?
– jmh
9 hours ago
I believe it is HDD Physical Drive: Device Name: easystore 25FA Media Name: WD easystore 25FA Media Protocol: USB Internal: No Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
– Sizzle
9 hours ago
1
I just noticed that the answer below includes an image from Activity monitor and in the bottom right it shows data read and write speeds. You could also get BlackMagic Speed Test from the App Store to double check your external drive read and write speeds. The app is free.
– jmh
8 hours ago
1
@Sizzle JMH has the real answer, run Black Magic and ask a follow on question with details. Rather than keeping this question morphing with 20 questions and more data a second question linked here would get you more specific help.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
Is your external disk an HDD or SSD?
– jmh
9 hours ago
Is your external disk an HDD or SSD?
– jmh
9 hours ago
I believe it is HDD Physical Drive: Device Name: easystore 25FA Media Name: WD easystore 25FA Media Protocol: USB Internal: No Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
– Sizzle
9 hours ago
I believe it is HDD Physical Drive: Device Name: easystore 25FA Media Name: WD easystore 25FA Media Protocol: USB Internal: No Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
– Sizzle
9 hours ago
1
1
I just noticed that the answer below includes an image from Activity monitor and in the bottom right it shows data read and write speeds. You could also get BlackMagic Speed Test from the App Store to double check your external drive read and write speeds. The app is free.
– jmh
8 hours ago
I just noticed that the answer below includes an image from Activity monitor and in the bottom right it shows data read and write speeds. You could also get BlackMagic Speed Test from the App Store to double check your external drive read and write speeds. The app is free.
– jmh
8 hours ago
1
1
@Sizzle JMH has the real answer, run Black Magic and ask a follow on question with details. Rather than keeping this question morphing with 20 questions and more data a second question linked here would get you more specific help.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
@Sizzle JMH has the real answer, run Black Magic and ask a follow on question with details. Rather than keeping this question morphing with 20 questions and more data a second question linked here would get you more specific help.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
add a comment |
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
The bus speed you quote is a theoretical maximum and not that the bus somehow speeds up any and all storage connected to it.
An analogy would be a 10 lane highway that’s perfectly packed with cars that drive themselves bumper to bumper in perfect coordination. You need good buffering, ideal behavior, no hiccups to reach the “specs”
In practice, there are lane changes, no cars to enter, or just everyone driving in the left lane.
I would open the Activity Monitor and look at the Disk tab. Specifically the IOPS and data rates are different constraints.

IO is like getting all the vehicles on and off the highway so you’ll have low transfer rates when there are lots of small delays and metadata being read from slow storage. That's on the left side and in the chart when IO is selected.
Your graph shows an IO constrained transfer, the system is spending more time locating the next group of bits to transfer, it can’t likely fill up the max transfer of the drive. Most consumer drives can absorb 20 MBps to 60 MBps and most Macs can put out hundreds and NVMe ssd on recent Macs thousands of MBps and IOps.
Bandwidth is another constraint similar to the on ramps and off ramps - your sending and receiving device might be the bottleneck. That's the data read/sec on the right and shown above.
Without any specific data measurements, hopefully the high level description of what to look for and how to think of the bus speed helps you sort out if you brought too fast an expectation to devices that can’t deliver or if everything is capable of fast transfers and you have a configuration / software / hardware issue in hand to diagnose and optimize.
My hunch is the speed estimate is conservative, Finder is single threading the transfer and your bottleneck is a consumer grade external drive (HDD or slower flash storage) and you'd be able to get 60% of the max with a more efficient transfer and a fast Thunderbolt 3 type storage device attached: https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2019/06/thunderbolt-3-enclosures-with-single-dual-quad-m-2-nvme-ssds-for-esxi.html
How do i load my screenshot in here?
– Sizzle
8 hours ago
@Sizzle when you use the edit control, there is a ? For help in using the editing controls. help center has a lot of words and more details if the inline help is too terse.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
3
Many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of files moved to the external disk using a Finder drag will add a lot of overhead to the process. If you're dealing with a humongous number of files, I've found that using themvTerminal command to bypass the Finder runs very fast indeed.
– IconDaemon
6 hours ago
@Sizzle click on the picture icon. I click on browser. when you have selected and opened the picture, you click on add picture. It's a little messy in your original post.
– historystamp
2 hours ago
add a comment |
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
The bus speed you quote is a theoretical maximum and not that the bus somehow speeds up any and all storage connected to it.
An analogy would be a 10 lane highway that’s perfectly packed with cars that drive themselves bumper to bumper in perfect coordination. You need good buffering, ideal behavior, no hiccups to reach the “specs”
In practice, there are lane changes, no cars to enter, or just everyone driving in the left lane.
I would open the Activity Monitor and look at the Disk tab. Specifically the IOPS and data rates are different constraints.

IO is like getting all the vehicles on and off the highway so you’ll have low transfer rates when there are lots of small delays and metadata being read from slow storage. That's on the left side and in the chart when IO is selected.
Your graph shows an IO constrained transfer, the system is spending more time locating the next group of bits to transfer, it can’t likely fill up the max transfer of the drive. Most consumer drives can absorb 20 MBps to 60 MBps and most Macs can put out hundreds and NVMe ssd on recent Macs thousands of MBps and IOps.
Bandwidth is another constraint similar to the on ramps and off ramps - your sending and receiving device might be the bottleneck. That's the data read/sec on the right and shown above.
Without any specific data measurements, hopefully the high level description of what to look for and how to think of the bus speed helps you sort out if you brought too fast an expectation to devices that can’t deliver or if everything is capable of fast transfers and you have a configuration / software / hardware issue in hand to diagnose and optimize.
My hunch is the speed estimate is conservative, Finder is single threading the transfer and your bottleneck is a consumer grade external drive (HDD or slower flash storage) and you'd be able to get 60% of the max with a more efficient transfer and a fast Thunderbolt 3 type storage device attached: https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2019/06/thunderbolt-3-enclosures-with-single-dual-quad-m-2-nvme-ssds-for-esxi.html
How do i load my screenshot in here?
– Sizzle
8 hours ago
@Sizzle when you use the edit control, there is a ? For help in using the editing controls. help center has a lot of words and more details if the inline help is too terse.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
3
Many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of files moved to the external disk using a Finder drag will add a lot of overhead to the process. If you're dealing with a humongous number of files, I've found that using themvTerminal command to bypass the Finder runs very fast indeed.
– IconDaemon
6 hours ago
@Sizzle click on the picture icon. I click on browser. when you have selected and opened the picture, you click on add picture. It's a little messy in your original post.
– historystamp
2 hours ago
add a comment |
The bus speed you quote is a theoretical maximum and not that the bus somehow speeds up any and all storage connected to it.
An analogy would be a 10 lane highway that’s perfectly packed with cars that drive themselves bumper to bumper in perfect coordination. You need good buffering, ideal behavior, no hiccups to reach the “specs”
In practice, there are lane changes, no cars to enter, or just everyone driving in the left lane.
I would open the Activity Monitor and look at the Disk tab. Specifically the IOPS and data rates are different constraints.

IO is like getting all the vehicles on and off the highway so you’ll have low transfer rates when there are lots of small delays and metadata being read from slow storage. That's on the left side and in the chart when IO is selected.
Your graph shows an IO constrained transfer, the system is spending more time locating the next group of bits to transfer, it can’t likely fill up the max transfer of the drive. Most consumer drives can absorb 20 MBps to 60 MBps and most Macs can put out hundreds and NVMe ssd on recent Macs thousands of MBps and IOps.
Bandwidth is another constraint similar to the on ramps and off ramps - your sending and receiving device might be the bottleneck. That's the data read/sec on the right and shown above.
Without any specific data measurements, hopefully the high level description of what to look for and how to think of the bus speed helps you sort out if you brought too fast an expectation to devices that can’t deliver or if everything is capable of fast transfers and you have a configuration / software / hardware issue in hand to diagnose and optimize.
My hunch is the speed estimate is conservative, Finder is single threading the transfer and your bottleneck is a consumer grade external drive (HDD or slower flash storage) and you'd be able to get 60% of the max with a more efficient transfer and a fast Thunderbolt 3 type storage device attached: https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2019/06/thunderbolt-3-enclosures-with-single-dual-quad-m-2-nvme-ssds-for-esxi.html
How do i load my screenshot in here?
– Sizzle
8 hours ago
@Sizzle when you use the edit control, there is a ? For help in using the editing controls. help center has a lot of words and more details if the inline help is too terse.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
3
Many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of files moved to the external disk using a Finder drag will add a lot of overhead to the process. If you're dealing with a humongous number of files, I've found that using themvTerminal command to bypass the Finder runs very fast indeed.
– IconDaemon
6 hours ago
@Sizzle click on the picture icon. I click on browser. when you have selected and opened the picture, you click on add picture. It's a little messy in your original post.
– historystamp
2 hours ago
add a comment |
The bus speed you quote is a theoretical maximum and not that the bus somehow speeds up any and all storage connected to it.
An analogy would be a 10 lane highway that’s perfectly packed with cars that drive themselves bumper to bumper in perfect coordination. You need good buffering, ideal behavior, no hiccups to reach the “specs”
In practice, there are lane changes, no cars to enter, or just everyone driving in the left lane.
I would open the Activity Monitor and look at the Disk tab. Specifically the IOPS and data rates are different constraints.

IO is like getting all the vehicles on and off the highway so you’ll have low transfer rates when there are lots of small delays and metadata being read from slow storage. That's on the left side and in the chart when IO is selected.
Your graph shows an IO constrained transfer, the system is spending more time locating the next group of bits to transfer, it can’t likely fill up the max transfer of the drive. Most consumer drives can absorb 20 MBps to 60 MBps and most Macs can put out hundreds and NVMe ssd on recent Macs thousands of MBps and IOps.
Bandwidth is another constraint similar to the on ramps and off ramps - your sending and receiving device might be the bottleneck. That's the data read/sec on the right and shown above.
Without any specific data measurements, hopefully the high level description of what to look for and how to think of the bus speed helps you sort out if you brought too fast an expectation to devices that can’t deliver or if everything is capable of fast transfers and you have a configuration / software / hardware issue in hand to diagnose and optimize.
My hunch is the speed estimate is conservative, Finder is single threading the transfer and your bottleneck is a consumer grade external drive (HDD or slower flash storage) and you'd be able to get 60% of the max with a more efficient transfer and a fast Thunderbolt 3 type storage device attached: https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2019/06/thunderbolt-3-enclosures-with-single-dual-quad-m-2-nvme-ssds-for-esxi.html
The bus speed you quote is a theoretical maximum and not that the bus somehow speeds up any and all storage connected to it.
An analogy would be a 10 lane highway that’s perfectly packed with cars that drive themselves bumper to bumper in perfect coordination. You need good buffering, ideal behavior, no hiccups to reach the “specs”
In practice, there are lane changes, no cars to enter, or just everyone driving in the left lane.
I would open the Activity Monitor and look at the Disk tab. Specifically the IOPS and data rates are different constraints.

IO is like getting all the vehicles on and off the highway so you’ll have low transfer rates when there are lots of small delays and metadata being read from slow storage. That's on the left side and in the chart when IO is selected.
Your graph shows an IO constrained transfer, the system is spending more time locating the next group of bits to transfer, it can’t likely fill up the max transfer of the drive. Most consumer drives can absorb 20 MBps to 60 MBps and most Macs can put out hundreds and NVMe ssd on recent Macs thousands of MBps and IOps.
Bandwidth is another constraint similar to the on ramps and off ramps - your sending and receiving device might be the bottleneck. That's the data read/sec on the right and shown above.
Without any specific data measurements, hopefully the high level description of what to look for and how to think of the bus speed helps you sort out if you brought too fast an expectation to devices that can’t deliver or if everything is capable of fast transfers and you have a configuration / software / hardware issue in hand to diagnose and optimize.
My hunch is the speed estimate is conservative, Finder is single threading the transfer and your bottleneck is a consumer grade external drive (HDD or slower flash storage) and you'd be able to get 60% of the max with a more efficient transfer and a fast Thunderbolt 3 type storage device attached: https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2019/06/thunderbolt-3-enclosures-with-single-dual-quad-m-2-nvme-ssds-for-esxi.html
edited 6 hours ago
answered 9 hours ago
bmike♦bmike
165k46 gold badges300 silver badges644 bronze badges
165k46 gold badges300 silver badges644 bronze badges
How do i load my screenshot in here?
– Sizzle
8 hours ago
@Sizzle when you use the edit control, there is a ? For help in using the editing controls. help center has a lot of words and more details if the inline help is too terse.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
3
Many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of files moved to the external disk using a Finder drag will add a lot of overhead to the process. If you're dealing with a humongous number of files, I've found that using themvTerminal command to bypass the Finder runs very fast indeed.
– IconDaemon
6 hours ago
@Sizzle click on the picture icon. I click on browser. when you have selected and opened the picture, you click on add picture. It's a little messy in your original post.
– historystamp
2 hours ago
add a comment |
How do i load my screenshot in here?
– Sizzle
8 hours ago
@Sizzle when you use the edit control, there is a ? For help in using the editing controls. help center has a lot of words and more details if the inline help is too terse.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
3
Many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of files moved to the external disk using a Finder drag will add a lot of overhead to the process. If you're dealing with a humongous number of files, I've found that using themvTerminal command to bypass the Finder runs very fast indeed.
– IconDaemon
6 hours ago
@Sizzle click on the picture icon. I click on browser. when you have selected and opened the picture, you click on add picture. It's a little messy in your original post.
– historystamp
2 hours ago
How do i load my screenshot in here?
– Sizzle
8 hours ago
How do i load my screenshot in here?
– Sizzle
8 hours ago
@Sizzle when you use the edit control, there is a ? For help in using the editing controls. help center has a lot of words and more details if the inline help is too terse.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
@Sizzle when you use the edit control, there is a ? For help in using the editing controls. help center has a lot of words and more details if the inline help is too terse.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago
3
3
Many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of files moved to the external disk using a Finder drag will add a lot of overhead to the process. If you're dealing with a humongous number of files, I've found that using the
mv Terminal command to bypass the Finder runs very fast indeed.– IconDaemon
6 hours ago
Many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of files moved to the external disk using a Finder drag will add a lot of overhead to the process. If you're dealing with a humongous number of files, I've found that using the
mv Terminal command to bypass the Finder runs very fast indeed.– IconDaemon
6 hours ago
@Sizzle click on the picture icon. I click on browser. when you have selected and opened the picture, you click on add picture. It's a little messy in your original post.
– historystamp
2 hours ago
@Sizzle click on the picture icon. I click on browser. when you have selected and opened the picture, you click on add picture. It's a little messy in your original post.
– historystamp
2 hours ago
add a comment |
Is your external disk an HDD or SSD?
– jmh
9 hours ago
I believe it is HDD Physical Drive: Device Name: easystore 25FA Media Name: WD easystore 25FA Media Protocol: USB Internal: No Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
– Sizzle
9 hours ago
1
I just noticed that the answer below includes an image from Activity monitor and in the bottom right it shows data read and write speeds. You could also get BlackMagic Speed Test from the App Store to double check your external drive read and write speeds. The app is free.
– jmh
8 hours ago
1
@Sizzle JMH has the real answer, run Black Magic and ask a follow on question with details. Rather than keeping this question morphing with 20 questions and more data a second question linked here would get you more specific help.
– bmike♦
8 hours ago