If the hard drive can be removed from the USB interface and onto SATA/ATA I would install it in the destination computer. You'll get much faster transfer speeds, as others have noted. For copying, assuming your on windows I would do a simple ROBOCOPY. It's about as fast as you can really hope for, though there are other alternatives.

ROBOCOPY /E /B /MT 'source' 'destination'

I'd try to avoid compressing all these files though, there is a good chance the time to compress and move would exceed simply moving the files.

*Added the /MT option for robocopy. It can greatly speed up transfers when your in a multi-thread environment.

If the hard drive can be removed from the USB interface and onto SATA/ATA, I would install it in the destination computer. You'll get much faster transfer speeds, as others have noted. For copying, assuming you're on Windows, I would do a simple ROBOCOPY. It's about as fast as you can really hope for, though there are other alternatives.

ROBOCOPY /E /B /MT 'source' 'destination'

I'd try to avoid compressing all these files though, there is a good chance the time to compress and move would exceed simply moving the files.

*Added the /MT option for robocopy. It can greatly speed up transfers when you're in a multi-thread environment.

If the HD can be removed from the USB interface and onto SATA/ATA I would install it in the destination computer. You'll get much faster transfer speeds, as others have noted. For copying, assuming your on windows I would do a simple ROBOCOPY. Its about as fast as you can really hope for, though there are other alternatives.

ROBOCOPY /E /B /MT 'source' 'destination'

I'd try to avoid compressing all these files though, there is a good chance the time to compress and move would exceed simply moving the files.

*Added the /MT option for robocopy. It can greatly speed up transfers when your in a multi-thread environment.

If the hard drive can be removed from the USB interface and onto SATA/ATA I would install it in the destination computer. You'll get much faster transfer speeds, as others have noted. For copying, assuming your on windows I would do a simple ROBOCOPY. It's about as fast as you can really hope for, though there are other alternatives.

ROBOCOPY /E /B /MT 'source' 'destination'

I'd try to avoid compressing all these files though, there is a good chance the time to compress and move would exceed simply moving the files.

*Added the /MT option for robocopy. It can greatly speed up transfers when your in a multi-thread environment.