Peter Jason wrote:
On Thu, 17 Jan 2019 17:43:07 -0500, nospam
wrote:

In article , Peter Jason
wrote:

I've bought a new 4000GB Seagate HDD to hold
2500GB of data from an old 4000GB suspect one.

To copy over all the data will take ages. Is
there a faster way?
it sounds like you're using usb 2 hi speed, which is very slow and
would take around a day or so to copy it, quite possibly longer if
there are a lot of small files versus fewer larger ones.

with usb 3 superspeed, it should take several hours. let it run
overnight and it should be done by morning.

Thanks, I'll make sure both disks are connected
directly to the MBoard.

If there is any bad news, you'll get the bad news faster that way
(with SATA ports).

Personally, I would "Macrium Clone" while they're both on
SATA ports, because the access is sequential rather than
random. Data is transferred in cluster order most of the time.
If you "resize" partitions while cloning, all bets are off
(you'll hear rattling). Regular drag and drop copy, if
the source files are fragmented, you'll likely hear rattling
on the (sick) source drive.

If you use Robocopy, at least that keeps a log. Robocopy is
now native to the OS and no longer needs to be downloaded.
It is a folder to folder copy program. Here, the folders
are entire hard drives. Note - this command *erases* the
destination - do NOT use this command if data already
exists on the destination drive. This command is also
missing the options needed to (attempt) to copy a C: drive.
I assume the drive in question is a data drive when you
asked this question, and this command is *only* for
data drive to data drive copying. I'm missing the option
to step over Junction Points on this one.

(Administrator Command Prompt window, to be able to copy everything)

cd /d %userprofile%\Downloads === log will go here

robocopy L:\ F:\ /mir /copy:datso /dcopy:t /r:3 /w:2 /zb /np /tee /v /log:robocopy_l_to_f.log

So what you do there, is make the "new" disk GPT in the
Disk Management when it asks. Then, make a new partition
out of the entire drive. Let's call that F: as in the example.
Then you can copy the contents of L: to F: with Robocopy.
(Change the drive letters to reflect your own setup.)

Robocopy pipelines the transfer and can read and write the
drives at the same time. Rather than alternating back and
forth between the separate drives like some other copying
methods might.

You have many ways to copy the data.

"ddrescue" is reserved for cases where the source
drive is damaged and the damn transfer stops each time.
If you have CRC errors on the drive, expect some
hair loss.

HTH,
Paul