Friend cloned his new drive (160gb) from old (60gb) using Acronis.This was a Laptop so used a USB connection. Took all night(9 hours).
Is this normal using USB against a Desktop comp IDE cable transfer. Just staggered at the difference. What is the difference in speed between the two systems. Just curious.

USB 2.0 transfer speed is 480mbps which equals 60MBps. Actual transfer speeds usually run a little more than half that.

USB 1.1 transfer speeds equal 12mbps which equals 1.5MBps.

3600 seconds per hour, you do the math.

Remember there is other overhead because when Acronis is reading the internal it may not be writing to the external at the same time due to bus sharing on the MBoard.

One other issue worth noting. If your friend's computer BIOS is not 48bit LBA compliant they WILL eventually have data corruption and loss. Look at the link below for further info on 48bit LBA compliance. Tell your friend to watch the startup screens to see if the new 160GB drive is identified by model and the CORRECT capacity.

http://www.48bitlba.com/index.htm

Now can see the amount being transferred.
Will tell him to check on boot up, as you advised.
I did Google for the info but there was such a difference in figures given.
Thanks for your reply, appreciated.