How long for a backup?

I have a 6Tb MycloudEX2100 NAS with around 3.2Gb used up so I bought a 6Tb hard drive to keep a backup of the backups that are on the NAS …been there, done that, lost everything hence the paranoia !
My question is how long should it take to complete given that the external drive is USB3 as is the port and decent quality cable connecting them together.
So far it has been on for nearly 24 hours and has only done 12/16 shares… it does appear to be running as one of the folders has increased by around 2Gb in 7 minutes…surely it should be quicker than that ??
I have already done a full factory default reset on the NAS

Hi there,

What type of files are you trying to backup? I would also like to know if the files are small, this can make the backup go slower than usual.

loads of different files…everything from a PC and 2 laptops, including thousands of pictures and video files…the whole content of everything we have, In total about 2.8Tb
In desperation I connected the drive to my PC - so the connection was external USB drive - PC - router - NAS, all via the network cabling (which is running at 1Gb) - and, with windows showing a transfer rate averaging 100mb/sec a mere 8 hours later it had completed !
What on earth is the point of having a (supposedly USB3) connection on the NAS which the software clearly states is for expansion AND backups to an external drive if it doesn’t work !

I have trawled Google and it seems I am not alone in my experiences

Same exact problem. I would love to hear the solution. I just started looking so maybe it is elsewhere in these forums.

In my past at work we had issues like this on our system administrators told us it was a Windows issue…Windows does not like copying a large number of small sized files. It looks like from your connection description above you are having Windows (or other OS) perform the copying for you. You might have had better luck letting the backup feature of the NAS (if you have it) do it for you and just go straight from the NAS to the external without use of the computer.

How we got around it when I worked years ago is to zip the files to one file and copy that. Surprisingly, it was way faster to zip the files, copy the zip, and unzip the files on the other end than do the straight copy of mall the files.

hmmm… thanks for your reply but If you look at the first post this is what I tried to do - i.e. backup to an attached USB drive…it took nearly 3 days to complete hence the question

Oops…yep I did miss that in the original post. I am in the middle of a backup right now (7ish TB). I’ll try to remember to let you know how long it takes so you can compare. I assume it will take awhile…all my music/movies/photos…

I just looked at it and it moved a 1.2Gb file in about 25 seconds. Rough guestimation calculation it will take me 40 hours to transfer my 7TB of media via this method (if I got all my zeros right). I don’t know what to compare that to…