O/T: Computers are odd. Sometimes slow, some times fast?

[JRouche]

So I am moving an 11gb file from one hard drive to another. Well, its not a file, its a folder. Still. 11gb moved, not moved..... Copied. It took over 5 minutes. Under four. Still, why so slow? I have been shredding my system a lil. Cleaning time. It is a physical transfer from one hard drive to another, both in the same space. You would think it would be a lil faster?

I only ask? Is that the norm? I have to move so much more. At that pace I dont see it happening. And yes, one computer, many drives. We are talking about Tera byts. It just seems so slow. I should have mirrored my drives from the start right? I could not afford to. JR

[RB211]

So I am moving an 11gb file from one hard drive to another. Well, its not a file, its a folder. Still. 11gb moved, not moved..... Copied. It took over 5 minutes. Under four. Still, why so slow? I have been shredding my system a lil. Cleaning time. It is a physical transfer from one hard drive to another, both in the same space. You would think it would be a lil faster?

I only ask? Is that the norm? I have to move so much more. At that pace I dont see it happening. And yes, one computer, many drives. We are talking about Tera byts. It just seems so slow. I should have mirrored my drives from the start right? I could not afford to. JR

Single large files move much quicker than thousands of tiny files. When it gets to a large group of small files it slows way down. I suppose the time estimate is based on what it's currently doing, not calculated as an average after examining what it needs to move? The developers probably picked the easiest method to implement.

[Black Forest]

You are going to need to give us more info on the system you are using. As in processor, memory, what type of drives you are using, etc.,etc.. There might be methods to speed things up for you.

[J Tiers]

RB has it. The time is in setting up the files system and records. One big file is one location, and then just bit transfer. It will always be faster than the same size broken into many small files.

SS drives are a lot faster than mechanical drives, but stick memories are often really slow by comparison, due to the interface being slow

[no704]

Defrag your drive first.

[skunkworks]

how are the drives physically connected?

[MrWhoopee]

First off, what has the world come to that we think 4 minutes is too long to transfer 11gb of data? That was an unimaginable amount of data just a couple of decades ago. I blame fast food and fax machines.

To your point, I would try creating a zip folder first, then copy it. It's not just the compression, similar to zipping for email, the folder is treated as a single entity/file. Just a suggestion, I haven't tried it to confirm.

[MrWhoopee]

Defrag your drive first.

Assuming a recent version of Windows, defrag is done automatically in the background.

[RB211]

I haven't defragged a disk since Win98, maybe XP? It's rare to have anything spin in a computer case these days unless it's a water pump or a fan. One of my boxes has a big spinner for storage. Programs go on a SSD.

[fjk]

How are the disks connected?
are they in separate controllers or daisy chained off of the same one?
USB? SATA? Etc
what are the raw speed specs of the disks?

what are the file systems? (What OS are you running?)

what else is your computer doing? Especially with regard to disk I/o?

How big are the files?

there are a lot of factors that influence the effective transfer rate.

I’d point out that you are getting around 45MBytes/second transfer rate

the fastest disks have raw transfer rates of o(200MBytes/sec) and SATA interfaces are either 150, 300, or 600 MBytes/second.

so, for example, if both disks are on the same SATA interface and it’s a 150MB/second interface, you are using 90MB/second to read and write the data, leaving 60MB for the overhead (reading and writing directories, block maps, the root block, and so on). In this case 45MB/second would be pretty darn good

frank

[JRouche]

Single large files move much quicker than thousands of tiny files. When it gets to a large group of small files it slows way down.

I think you nailed it. I said file when I meant to say folder. So yeah the folder had sub folders (3063) also and a total of 24,000 files. Thats why right? Thats my old "CNC" folder. I didnt think of the amount of files. I guess its just going to be some seat time to get it all moved over.

Thanks for the help. JR

[JRouche]

You are going to need to give us more info on the system you are using. As in processor, memory, what type of drives you are using, etc.,etc.. There might be methods to speed things up for you.

Hey BF. Yeah, its an old computer hence the reason for the move. It is a 64bit windows 7 system. It has an i7-980 running underclocked at 3.33Ghz and 24GB of memory and a fat stack of 7200rpm hard drives that need to be cleaned up. Its about 10-12 years old. Time for a new one I think. JR

[SLK001]

Bring up a DOS window and use XCOPY to transfer your files. Without the bloat of the Windows OS overhead, transfer speeds will be much faster. There is also a program called "Teracopy" that works a lot faster than the Windows "drag and drop".

[JRouche]

Bring up a DOS window and use XCOPY to transfer your files. Without the bloat of the Windows OS overhead, transfer speeds will be much faster. There is also a program called "Teracopy" that works a lot faster than the Windows "drag and drop".

I have went right to DOS to do that before and for some reason it ran afoul once, only once. The file structure was unreadable within Win. I didnt think to look for a 3rd party software. Duh! Ill go look for Teracopy. Thanks. JR

[RB211]

Couple days ago I had to remove an expired solidworks installation. No uninstaller to be found, didn't show up in uninstall programs. Went with the heavy fisted caveman approach and just deleted the directories right off the disk. Except some of the files were write protected. Ended up having to go to a command prompt elevated to admin to remove everything.