Copy from USB1 to USB2

[Starwalkersg]

A technical question for experts:

If portable hdd 1 on usb1 COPY files to portable hdd 2 on usb2, will the files data physically go through my macbook hdd? or is it direct from usb1 to usb2?

Thanks

 

[chenaz]

Interesting . Should be directly to USB 2 directly. But will go by your MacBook ram or cache I think. It has to write somewhere before going to destination

A technical question for experts:

If portable hdd 1 on usb1 COPY files to portable hdd 2 on usb2, will the files data physically go through my macbook hdd? or is it direct from usb1 to usb2?

Thanks

 

[EJB]

It will go through the system bus first.

 

[zitseng]

A technical question for experts:

If portable hdd 1 on usb1 COPY files to portable hdd 2 on usb2, will the files data physically go through my macbook hdd? or is it direct from usb1 to usb2?

Thanks

It won't go "through" the MacBook's HDD. It just goes through the RAM/processor/system bus. The USB bus will be the bottleneck.

 

[Starwalkersg]

Thanks for the inputs! Next question is how safe is this? If usb1 and usb2 contains highly classified material that transfers through the cache/bus, does it leave any footprint? Will any software be able to retrieve the data from the computer?

 

[zitseng]

Thanks for the inputs! Next question is how safe is this? If usb1 and usb2 contains highly classified material that transfers through the cache/bus, does it leave any footprint? Will any software be able to retrieve the data from the computer?

Depends on what kind of threat are you concerned about.

As nothing gets written in the MacBook's disk, there's nothing to steal from it. Once your notebook is powered off, everything in RAM/cache/etc is gone. At this point, even if your MacBook is stolen, your sensitive material isn't there anymore.

There are, of course, risks from malware surreptitiously collecting data from your MacBook while it was running, while you were doing the copy, etc. Viruses, trojans, all the usual suspects. More scary nowadays in the manner in which they can get into your computer.

Then there are other interesting scenarios if you're up against very well funded enemies. E.g. perhaps the OS itself has been bugged, the processor's microcode is bugged, perhaps they could remotely pick up EM signals to decipher what's going on, etc.

For most casual users... full disk encryption is a good thing to have. I wrote an old post about it: https://zitseng.com/archives/8573

Sidenote: For those who think SSL's really cool, and even if ignoring any protocol or implementation faults... there are things inherently wrong. https://zitseng.com/archives/7489

 

[EJB]

The moment data moves from point A to point B, it depends on the user and the system security already.

How safe it is depends on how clean the system/user is.

 

[Starwalkersg]

Depends on what kind of threat are you concerned about.

As nothing gets written in the MacBook's disk, there's nothing to steal from it. Once your notebook is powered off, everything in RAM/cache/etc is gone. At this point, even if your MacBook is stolen, your sensitive material isn't there anymore.

There are, of course, risks from malware surreptitiously collecting data from your MacBook while it was running, while you were doing the copy, etc. Viruses, trojans, all the usual suspects. More scary nowadays in the manner in which they can get into your computer.

Then there are other interesting scenarios if you're up against very well funded enemies. E.g. perhaps the OS itself has been bugged, the processor's microcode is bugged, perhaps they could remotely pick up EM signals to decipher what's going on, etc.

For most casual users... full disk encryption is a good thing to have. I wrote an old post about it: https://zitseng.com/archives/8573

Sidenote: For those who think SSL's really cool, and even if ignoring any protocol or implementation faults... there are things inherently wrong. https://zitseng.com/archives/7489

Thank you! Very informative blog you have