I have some security video on four 1TB USB 2 external drives I added the files to the drives a few files at a time over a year or two. I wanted to move all the files all onto a single large drive but I just gave up due to the drives spinning for so long (days!) and its power is over the USB cable not external brick.

I guess that's the point of the article the data we humans can now create is so enormous it's impossible to move it other than in bulk physically.