Converting USB-C Speed to USB-A

Support & Help Requests Hardware
#1

You may have read about my issues booting my Dell r710 in another thread. My frustration has led me to consider just scrubbing the entire box and installation a fresh OS. The biggest issue I have is that I have nearly 13Tb of data I would hate to lose.

So, I'm thinking of buying an external HDD with up to 18Tb storage to back up my data.

Technology never stands still. So, external HDD drives with lots of storage can be had, but they all now sport USB-C connectors and my Dell has only USB-A. The server onlhy supports USB 1.1 and 2.0.

This means a) I'd have a use an adapter to connect the external drives, and b) transfer performance would be in the toilet (USB 2.0 = 480 Mbps; USB 3.x = 5 Gbps or greater). So, without trying the math, I can see that backing up 13Tb of data would take a week or more. Double that, to restore.

Ugh.

Alternatives? Suggestions?

#2

Not addressing fast transfer question but would definately recommend that you do some sort of backup if data is critical. Only have <2tb and it is backed up on 4 different removable drives. Where I worked asked the office manager if backups were being done. Proud response with smile was they are having issues with C drive (Windows) but were backing up to D drive. Smile dissappeared when informed them that D was just a partition on the C drive in their computer. Once deleted some critical data on machine that was also backed up on a removable drive while doing some configuration. Then oops dropped the removeable drive (had glass platters) all gone.
Someone may chime in with info concerning server backup.

Quick check on Amazon showed drives with USB 3.0 which would still be slow on USB 2.0, possibility if nothing else available.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=18+gb+hard+drice&crid=16Y9RCSXACG7W&sprefix=18+gb+hard+drice%2Caps%2C186&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

1 Like
#3

An adapter will not give you additional speed as you probably already know. Does your server have room for a USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 connector? That and the appropriate cable might be a better solution if your server chassis can handle it.

1 Like
#4

If I remember correctly spinning hard drives can't do more than 1.5 Gbps. I expect around 1.0 when moving lots of data. Of course it matters what you are copying as a lot of small files will slow the process down due to opening and closing.

-Other alternatives come to mind is Gigabit ethernet to another computer to the external drive.

-Using a bare drive and installing it in the system and simply copy what you need onto it. There are external adapters that you can use for bare SATA drives which is what I use when I want an external drive. The flexibility is a nice feature especially when you have many drives on hand.

At 100 MBps that would be about 2 hrs and 45 minutes per TeraByte.

2 Likes