Is Thunderbolt PCI card good alternative for slow data speed

[klinsmann]

I am searching for good and fast data backup solution. First we use tape drives. But that was really costly. So we switched to external hard drives that we can add as many as we want. I am having some important data which is regularly backup on different places. At my place I am looking for a more faster solution. The software that works on lan takes really long time to move files. There might be more than 100GB of data. I heard that thunderbolt is a fast data interface. Does a Thunderbird pci card will do the job.

[chuck28]

Yes it can. It offers you data transfer speed in gigabits. But the device where your system is connected must also have a thunderbolt connector. Then you can connect your pc and backup device on this interface and get a much more faster data transfer speed.

[Pinlunk]

Why don't you try usb 3.0 or a high speed lan connector. That will be more reasonable and easy to configure. USB 3.0 devices are quiet easily available. Also on some external hard drive which are ideally designed for data backup offers you Ethernet port. So that you can get a much high speed for copying the data. Compare to Ethernet port I think going with usb 3.0 is far more better. It might reduce your backup time to great extent making your job easier and faster. I am sure you can find a good pci 3.0 drive. I am not having a really huge amount of data, but around 10 to 20 gb. First when I try to backup them on old usb 2.0 interface I have to wait for long time. But when I upgraded to usb 3.0 the issue is solved. It worked really fine and has no issue. The transfer speed is really faster saving a lot amount of time in backup process. It is not complicated to find a usb 3.0 upgrades for your system. Instead of buying a thunderbolt pci card search for something that offers you everything. There are some costly specialized card available in the market that offer you around 8GB of data transfer speed.

[Roey]

Thunderbolt is faster. It gives you much higher speed compare to a usb port. But for that you need a system that is compatible with thunderbolt. I had seen the data transfer speed on mac system which are really awesome.

[Lisa Boney]

You can go with thunderbolt pci cards. They are fine enough. Here what matters is your backup policy. I am having around 80GB of data which consist of files, images, videos, etc. I am using a commercial backup utility with some advance features. The backup policy is configured in such a way that it only replaces those files which are modified. It does not 80GB of data each time. That is a kind time saver. When people work on the data around 2 to 4 GB of data is modified while everything remains the same as it is. So the backup software only modifies the files which has some kind of changes. Other than this everything remain the same. So in your backup software just see whether you are having such policy or not. Apply it for more effective backup and save time. I do not think upgrades can help you much here.