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    how does 400G of RAM speed up data transfer? Commented Sep 7, 2015 at 9:39
  • Not sure this was the intent, but I read it as "any medium slower than RAM to RAM transfer is going to take a while", rather than "buy 400 GB of RAM and your HDD to HDD transfer will go faster". Commented Sep 7, 2015 at 10:07
  • Yep,, ram will buffer for you, and it will seem faster. You can do a HD to HD transfer with RAM buffering all the way and it will seem very fast. It will also take quite a wile to flush to disk, but HD to RAM to RAM to HD is faster then HD to HD. (Keep in mind you have to do HD to RAM to RAM to HD anyway but if you have less then your entire transfer size of RAM you will have to "flush" in segments.) Commented Sep 7, 2015 at 12:07
  • Another way to put is that to compress or even just send the entire source drive has to be read in to ram. If it doesn't fit all at once, it has to read a segment, send, discard segment, seek, read segment, etc. If it fits all at once then it just has to read all at one time. Same on the destination. Commented Sep 7, 2015 at 12:10
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    HD to RAM to RAM to HD is faster then HD to HD How can it be quicker? Commented Sep 11, 2015 at 17:36