Re: newbie file speed question

NewbieSupreme wrote:
Thanks for the reply, Michael. So is this the state of affairs in 2006, that we are still better off going to the command line than using the OS GUI? Do you know what exactly causes the problems in Windows Explorer? It just seems that with such a simple operation, and in this day and age, why would an XP Pro explorer drag/drop not work? Does this mean that XP's backup utility will have the same problems, if I schedule backups of these enormous folders?

Thanks again


"Michael W. Ryder" <_mwryder@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:TqcEf.586467$zb5.236897@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

NewbieSupreme wrote:

I searched te ng's for comments about this, but found only people looking for benchmark software. I realize everyone's system is diferent, but I just wanted to get a general idea as to whether my system is performing nominally or not.

I have:

- ASUS SK8V-UAY mobo
- AMD 64FX-51 processor
- 1Ghz Corsair RAM
- 2 SATA 250 GB Western Digital Hard drives, wired to VIA SATA ports on Mobo (1st SATA drive has OS on it) - formatted NTFS, grayed out in properties on choice of favoring performance (write caching disabled, I believe). System restore is monitoring the OS drive, not the other one
- 1 IDE 100 GB Western Digital on primary IDE on mobo (not really part of all this)
- Windows XP Pro, all current patches/packs etc. installed (again, on one of the SATA drives)

I'm trying to get a feel for the file transfer speed between these SATA drives. It seems that things aren't going very quickly. Using Windows Explorer Drag/drop, I have copied an 11 GB folder (several thousand files in a few thousand folders), a 24 GB folder, and a 160 GB folder. Files are all kinds; large high-res photoshop files (~600 Mb), video files (700Mb to 1.5 GB), disk-based webs, all kinds of files from about 7 years of PC use. I have disabled Norton';s auto protect while doing these copies.

The 11 GB took over an 90 minutes, with seemingly exponential time increase for the 24 GB. The 160 copy actually froze the PC: all the icons disappeared from the desktop, along with the START bar, and the mouse worked, but Cntl-Alt-Del didn't do anything, there was no hard drive activity; this happened after about 2 1/2 hours of the files copying.

Does anyone have any general overall notion about how long it should take for various file transfer sizes between these 2 SATA drives? I'm just looking for averages with similar setups. As long as I'm asking, is there some kind of limit on file/folder counts or sizes for copying? I'm a little worried that the 160 GB froze the PC. I know it's a lot of info, and there are millions of files in hundreds of thousands of folders, but still; and this is all coming off a very fresh install of OS and drivers, the PC's running only a few days, and I'm putting all my data on it from past backups to external drives.

Any help, tips, ideas, etc. greatly appreciated. If this should go in a different newsgroup, please direct me.

Thanks for reading and for any comments

Have you tried using XCOPY from a command prompt to copy the files? I found that using Explorer for backing up hundreds of thousands of files in a large number of directories could take several days. XCOPY did the same thing in a very short period of time, and if I told it to ignore unchanged files was even faster.



I think that in the hurry to make things "simpler for the masses" they have forgotten those who want the computer to do what it is best at. Computers are much better at comparing and moving data than they are at displaying pretty pictures.
Explorer has no options when copying folders to only move those files that have changed, at least I haven't found out how. Plus I think all the fancy animations, etc. just slow down the whole process. It may be OK for moving a couple of "small" files, but when you have to move hundreds of thousands of files and directories it chokes.
Using a program like Ghost to make a copy of a drive takes minutes to do using a DOS interface while copying the same drive using Explorer could take days, if Windows, in its infinite stupidity, will allow you to. I hate not being able to copy a file or folder because Windows doesn't think that I should. Its my file, not Windows!
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: newbie file speed question
    ... >> of the SATA drives) ... >> Explorer Drag/drop, I have copied an 11 GB folder (several thousand files ... >> in a few thousand folders), a 24 GB folder, and a 160 GB folder. ... >> for various file transfer sizes between these 2 SATA drives? ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Can XP show me list of recently visted folders?
    ... Neither explorer.exe or iexplore.exe show internet or local drives. ... They load shdocvw to view both the web and local files. ... Can XP show me a list of recently vested folders? ... >> explorer, and that is certainly possible to do.. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: Can XP show me list of recently visted folders?
    ... Neither explorer.exe or iexplore.exe show internet or local drives. ... They load shdocvw to view both the web and local files. ... Can XP show me a list of recently vested folders? ... >> explorer, and that is certainly possible to do.. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Can XP show me list of recently visted folders?
    ... Neither explorer.exe or iexplore.exe show internet or local drives. ... They load shdocvw to view both the web and local files. ... Can XP show me a list of recently vested folders? ... >> explorer, and that is certainly possible to do.. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.customize)
  • Re: Another flaw in Windows XP
    ... Explorer and the situation you described. ... > It is not the opening of Windows Explorer although that can also show this ... > notice the folders populate by cascading. ... > noticable with local drives and not with Network drives in folders that do ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)