If I transfer files between two external hard drives using a computer, are the files copied to the computer first? Or do the files just do directly from hard drive to hard drive?
Piggyback question.
If I connect via VPN to my home network and start moving files around on my nas without actually copying/moving them to my computer at all, do the files have to travel over the network to my computer to be moved to a different location on the nas?
Why
Because I heard SSDs have a finite read/write cycle so I preferably don’t want to copy a bunch of files to my computer’s SSD just to have it go to another hard drive.
Popular HDD tools like crystaldiskinfo have a counter "written bytes " if I remember correctly. You could do a test batch and look at that field.
I wouldn’t worry about SSD writes too much, there has been a calculation, dunno if it’s correct, but if you started writing to an SSD 24/7 it still wouldn’t exceed write capacity within the first years.
Better keep an eye on those SMART values from time to time and have a separate backup of the most important files.