Expected Transfer Speeds on Mac mini Running macOS Ventura

macos tips
1

Is there anyone know what are the typical transfer speeds on a 2023 Mac mini M2 Pro with macOS Ventura 13.2.1?

While transferring 550,000 files via USB 3.0 / 3.1 Gen 1 (5 GB/s) between two external drives (a 1TB HDD and a 2TB SSD), the observed transfer speeds ranged from 32 MB/s to 178 MB/s.

Based on my conversion, this corresponds to approximately 256 MB/s to 1,424 MB/s.

Are these speeds typical for data transfers over USB 3.0 / 3.1 Gen 1 (5 GB/s)?

2

It looks like you’re getting transfer speeds between 32MB/s and 178 MB/s over USB 3.0/3.1 Gen1 while moving files between an HDD and an SDD.
You can try these fixes:

  1. Try copying from an SSD to another SSD to see if the speeds improve.
  2. Try compressing the files into a ZIP before transferring.
  3. Some file systems are less efficient with lots of small files. Maybe APFS/HFS+ may perform better. You can consider reformatting it.
3

Your speeds are within a reasonable range given the HDD in the mix, but optimizing the file system, using better cables, avoiding hubs, and testing with larger files could improve performance.

If you’re mostly moving small files, compression might be your best bet!

Or you can try to clean your Mac space or your SSD drive to enhance performance. CleanMyJunk is highly recommended, which can clean junk files at once in a few clicks, have a try~