MacOS – Fastest means to copy many drives to one drive

external-diskhard drivemacos

I have data on 16 drives that I want to consolidate to one drive. The 16 drives are external with a firewire connection. Currently I have the one drive connected as an external drive on firewire. I can mount the target drive internally in my MacPro as an option. The total amount of data on the 16 drives is about 3TB. Four of the drives are 400GB the rest are smaller. Appreciate any help. I am in the process of copying one of the 400GB using Finder and it is estimating 15 hours and after 3 hours of copying, it looks like a fairly accurate estimate. Thanks for any help.

Best Answer

Doing the math, you want an interruptible tool so use rsync over Finder unless you really don't mind losing a day of transfer if finder chokes or a cable gets disconnected.

Barring the ability or inclination to command line - get a tool like Transmit or Kaleidoscope to sync the two folders. You'll lose far more time mounting drives than just connecting them and going. He limiting factor is probably not iops and instead drive throughput and not CPU or adapter speed.