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I was wondering what's the fastest interface connection between a laptop and desktop pc for data transfer?

considering the bandwidth data transfer rate.

SATA: i mean take the either laptop HDD (Hard disk drive) out n connect it to PC SATA port, or take the Desktop PC's HDD out and try connecting to SATA port offered if in laptop (which is bit difficult i guess since i don't think desktop HDD can connect to laptops SATA port, Can it? I may be wrong.

eSATA: eSATA to SATA or eSATA to eSATA

I've never used it, but Can it work?

Firewire: no idea

USB 2.0: which is slower than SATA

USB 3.0: can be fast, i think i'll need an external HDD or make internal desktop HDD as external using a USB 3.0 to SATA interface. So in a way connecting my Desktop HDD to laptop's USB 3.0 (for i've USBB 2.0 on my desktop n USB 3.0 on laptop)

LAN: I think it's way slower than SATA i suppose, 100 Mbps is way slower than SATA or USB 3.0

I don't know about CAT5, CAT6, Gigabit cables etc. Are they fast enough?

Any other interface connection you can think of, Please advice?

It'll be helpful for other users also in future, who come across this type question in mind.

(Edit Note: This question is not only about comparing just speeds only, it's about best possible combination "interface" connection between a PC and Laptop.

which can be - SATA to eSATA, SATA to SATA, LAN CAT5/CAT6, USB 3.0 to USB 2.0, USB to SATA etc. for all possible combinations interconnections, which will be go fastest while maintaining compatibility)

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  • Worth noting. USB 2.0 is 480Mbps/60MB/s. I wonder what speed hard drive are though. I don't think an SSD advertised as like 400 MB/s or Mb/s or whatever does it. Maybe more like 40MB/s. Be interesting to know in practice.
    – barlop
    Mar 25, 2013 at 13:30
  • If your computers are recent, they should come with Gigabit Ethernet capable of doing 1Gbps. I believe you can simply connect a normal LAN cable to both of them and manually set the IP and use whatever programs to transfer.
    – Alvin Wong
    Mar 25, 2013 at 13:36
  • Remember the bottleneck is your hard drive speed, as in SATA 1 or 2 or 3, as I have noted below.
    – MDMoore313
    Mar 25, 2013 at 13:37
  • Anyway, if you copy data from/to a magnetic hard disk, it will probably be the bottleneck.
    – Alvin Wong
    Mar 25, 2013 at 13:47
  • 186Gbps over LAN (which will transfer 23.25GB of data every second) set the world record in 2011. huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/16/… I don't know what the current record is. It seems that over LAN you can get as fast as you want. The problem comes with having read speed on the host PC and write speed on the end PC that can accommodate these tremendous speeds.
    – superuser
    Feb 5, 2014 at 0:37

3 Answers 3

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Your best bet would be to connect the HDD to the desktop/laptop directly. This can be done via SATA (if connecting laptop HDD to the desktop) or via eSATA/USB (desktop HDD to laptop, if you have the adapter).

If you already have a home LAN, you could just use that, setting up a fileshare on one of the machines.

The common pro between these two methods is that you're only copying the file once.

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Well, if you want the hard drive(s) to remain in both computers, and still want hopes of actually transferring data, go with the network connection. I'm going to put it out there and say of the options you list that's the only one that will get you data while the machines are up and running. Of course gigabit is the fastest of those that are standard on PCs nowadays.

Now, if you can remove the drive and connect it as a secondary to the other machine, you are limited to the speed of the sata connection of the hard drive, so it doesn't matter if you go with USB 3.0 or eSATA, the bottleneck is the actual hard drive.

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You can take a look at the List of devices bit rates for all info of all methods

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