Does it make sense that a backup of a system drive would take much longer if the source drive is IDE versus SATA? I'm backing up an IDE drive with about 30GB of data. It's taking about 2.5 hours. A similar backup of a SATA drive took only about 30 minutes. Both backups are being written to the same external USB drive. The backup is being performed 'cold,' using Ghost 15 to boot the computer.
It's not only the HDD speed, but the CPU and motherboard architecture that can influence speeds. Also, the USB controller on each system may be having an effect as opposed to the external HDD itself.
On my older system (2003), using DOS Ghost 2003 and internal PATA to PATA HDD backups of about 40 GB, it takes just over 1 hour. USB backup would likely take 3-4 hours--I don't do those!
My newer system (2011), using DOS Ghost 2003 and internal SATA to SATA HDD backups of about 50 GB takes about 40 minutes. I have not been able to use DOS USB drivers successfully on this system--so don't know how fast things might be.
Sorry, I'm not that technologically adept. However both the PATA and SATA drives were of the same system (at different times), so it seemed to me that 'all things were equal,' with the exception of the system drive.
Well, the controller chip for the PATA HDD is very likely a different controller chip on the motherboard from the SATA controller chip. Usually the newer technology SATA controller is on the North/South chip set that is tightly integrated with the CPU and motherboard architecture--while the PATA controller is present as an add-on chip to provide some compatibility with older technology--especially optical PATA IDE drives.