Performance Improvements

[callasda]

I only ever copy/synchronise from left to right with one HDD on the left one HDD as destination on the right. Does what I have sent you in the image take full advantage of the performance improvements that come with the donation edition ? Anything else to tweak for the sole purpose of speed ?
Thank you

[xCSxXenon]

Parallel threads will not make that setup any faster, maybe even slower with mechanical HDDs

[callasda]

Not a very helpful answer. Try and be a little more proactive, please. Lots of emails back and forth just to understand what settings are required to get the Performance Improvements that come with the donation edition, unless you're saying that from hard disk to hard disk, there aren't any ?

[xCSxXenon]

Correct, hard disks crawl when attempting multiple operations on them

[xCSxXenon]

https://freefilesync.org/manual.php?topic=performance
"FreeFileSync can be set up to issue multiple file accesses in parallel. This speeds up synchronization times dramatically in cases where single I/O operations have significant latency (e.g. long response times on a slow network connection) or they cannot use the full bandwidth available (e.g. an FTP server enforcing a speed limit for each connection)."

Parallel threads would help a setup where you are syncing a single SSD as the source to multiple mechanical drives. The SSD can handle multiple transfers so having it sync more threads to different targets would speed it up

[callasda]

So what are the best settings to apply for source on the left and destination on the right. Changes on the left are updated to destination on the right. That's all I need to know. What settings to apply for maximum performance. Thank you

[xCSxXenon]

There is nothing you need to or can do to make it faster, besides upgrading the hardware itself.

[callasda]

So after all that, no Performance Improvements with the donated edition when copying A to B ?
Thank you

[xCSxXenon]

Correct, you are limited by the speeds of your hardware currently

[callasda]

Out of curiosity, why is my hardware a limitation ? Surely we all use hard disks when copying or synchronising. What should I/you/we being using if not hard disks ?

[xCSxXenon]

Personally, I use 95% SSDs instead of hard drives. There is also the possibility of RAID, which can increase performance depending on the RAID type. There are also protocol differences, USB 2.0 vs 3.2 2x2, or thunderbolt 3/4, or SATA, or USB to SATA with UASP vs without UASP. The world of technology is vast.
I have a 4x SSD in a striped RAID, so it is 4x faster than a single SSD. That also means I could sync it to four separate target SSDs in parallel and take full advantage of the RAID's speed, but setting it to 40 threads won't make it 10x faster than default, it is only capable of being four times faster than default no matter what we tell it to do

[callasda]

I have tested FFS against Robocopy and FFS is undoubtedly faster.
Perhaps I am expecting too much from FFS.
Also I often avoid USB by using direct on board sata connections.
Perhaps via USB 3.2 is faster than on board copying ? Is that possible ?
Some mainboards have provision for 6 sata drives
I found that UASP makes very little difference

[xCSxXenon]

USB 3.2 Gen 1 supports up to 5 gb/s, 3.2 Gen 2 supports 10 gb/s, 3.2 Gen 2x2 supports 10 gb/s symmetrical.
SATA caps at 6 gb/s. In any case, plugging a mechanical hard drive that is only capable of ~100 MB/s, roughly 0.8 gb/s, is going to run the same speed on any four of the above interfaces. Transfer speeds can only be as fast as the slowest link in the chain. HDDs have been the slowest link for over a decade

[Ands]

Hello,
I understand from the above posts that using the multithread provited by the donation edition in a SSD to HDD configuration can be beneficial, but I would like to know if in a SSD to SSD configuration the multithread can be beneficial.
Thanks in advance

[xCSxXenon]

Hello,
I understand from the above posts that using the multithread provited by the donation edition in a SSD to HDD configuration can be beneficial, but I would like to know if in a SSD to SSD configuration the multithread can be beneficial.
Thanks in advance

I would 99% guarantee that it wouldn't benefit that scenario