How long for cloning?

[BorisMD]

Well guys, you were correct. The AC power was an issue with drive performance.

I have erased my now external with disk utility, over-writing with all zeros, and no mechanical flaws were detected. It took about 15 minutes.

I then used my now purchased copy of SD to do a non-bootable clone, and that took 26 minutes. I can see all of the files on the external, but the access time is somewhat long. The drive will still occassionally lapse into this tic tic tic mode in between normal hard drive access noises.

I'm going to use this drive for a while, and if any issues come up, I'll replace it.

Thanks,

Boris