All computers wait at the same speed.
Unknown
Ah, end of the year, time for backups. The ones you do not touch unless everything else has burned to the ground. After all, if your stuff is digital, it can be wiped out quickly.
So, doing backups one backup took about 20 hours for only a few hundred GBs. The next backup (roughly the same amount of data, same external hard disk drive, same device from which the data were copied) took less than an hour.
The difference? The cable.
Given that I have a couple of hard disks drivers from the same manufacturer (Western Digital) but with different capacity (ranging from 250 GB to 6 TB), I do have different cables. And — and I may be wrong here — I think that while some cables work, they were not designed for higher USB standards.
At least, that would explain the vastly different backup speeds. And the «fast» cable is also notably thicker — if you see/feel them at the same time. (And yup, might also be a partially broken hard disk drive or some other issue, but I don’t think so.)
So, when doing backups, mind the cables you use.
And yeah, end of the year is a good time for an external backup. After all, who knows what the new year brings.
You can thank me later — I take PayPal. 😉