Copying files in Windows

[ToneStar]

Will Microsoft ever get this right?  Why is it nearly impossible to copy massive amounts of files in windows, especially if you are trying to copy from a computer that is having issues or crashes, then you have to start all over with it slowly indexing everything and whenever there are files present already in a directory it is a nightmare.

I am also using Tera copy and that thing is freezing and not copying when trying to copy to a folder that already had half the files copied to it as well.

[ToneStar]

I am copying 1 pcie 4.0 super fast nvme drive to another as well and it gets like 5-50MBS instead of 100-7000

[Lunar River]

Can't say I've ever had any of these issues with copying through regular File Explorer.

 

[LAwLz]

Are you sure it's not an issue with your drive or something else? 

The file copying in Explorer isn't exactly the best, but if you're having issues with other programs too, and you mentioned a lot of crashes, then I think the issue might be somewhere else. 

[cooky560]

Honestly I've had no issues copying from gen4 ssds to gen4 ssds, I think you have some configuration, or possibly hardware issue.

[Mark Kaine]

26 minutes ago, cooky560 said:

Honestly I've had no issues copying from gen4 ssds to gen4 ssds, I think you have some configuration, or possibly hardware issue.

 

9 hours ago, ToneStar said:

especially if you are trying to copy from a computer that is having issues or crashes

well... that's the issue apparently,  not windows. 

 

OP maybe make a troubleshooting post to help you with your failing pc? 

 

if you keep trying to copy on a malfunctioning system you'll likely just lose the data...

[ToneStar]

1 hour ago, cooky560 said:

Honestly I've had no issues copying from gen4 ssds to gen4 ssds, I think you have some configuration, or possibly hardware issue.

Not the issue, have you copied a terabyte of files in 1 sitting?  Its always been an issue in windows, and windows never gets anywhere near the transfer rates of any drive and never has.

[ToneStar]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

well... that's the issue apparently,  not windows. 

 

OP maybe make a troubleshooting post to help you with your failing pc? 

 

if you keep trying to copy on a malfunctioning system you'll likely just lose the data...

That is not what is happening.  What I am referring to is more like CPU/GPU stability, what I am saying is if you restart a massive transfer after it has been stop it is a fucking nightmare.

[cooky560]

2 minutes ago, ToneStar said:

Not the issue, have you copied a terabyte of files in 1 sitting?  Its always been an issue in windows, and windows never gets anywhere near the transfer rates of any drive and never has.

The most I have copied in one sitting was 3TB, moving data from one to drive to another when I bought a replacement drive, again there was no issues. 

[Doobeedoo]

I've copied a TB from one to another PCIe 4.0 SSD no issues using Tera copy. Really could be drives or something. Is it offloading footage or many different type of files, but also drives them selves, their cache and all can depend too.

Which drives and does speed go fast and drop to slow initially.

[WhitetailAni]

23 minutes ago, ToneStar said:

Not the issue, have you copied a terabyte of files in 1 sitting?  Its always been an issue in windows, and windows never gets anywhere near the transfer rates of any drive and never has.

Are you copying a few large files, or a bunch of tiny files?

A lot of tiny files will always be slow because you have to update the filesystem's dictionary and copy the data every time you copy a new file.

Large files are faster because you update the dictionary and then just send data for minutes or hours, instead of every few seconds having to update the dictionary, transfer a bit of data, then update it again.

 

Tiny files are even slower on hard drives because it has to seek to the dictionary, then back to free space over and over. When writing data it can just mostly stay in the same spot 

[da na]

Might be some sort of issue with Teracopy then... never used it and never had these problems

[Poinkachu]

15 minutes ago, da na said:

Might be some sort of issue with Teracopy then... never used it and never had these problems

Never have problem with my Teracopy.

Even when I copied 1TB of files of various sizes.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, ToneStar said:

have you copied a terabyte of files in 1 sitting? 

yeah, i did, never an issue... sometimes its fast, sometimes its slow, that just depends on what kind of files it is.

 

So to clear this up, when is your computer crashing, at what point?  is it random?  

11 hours ago, ToneStar said:

especially if you are trying to copy from a computer that is having issues or crashes

 

[Mark Kaine]

26 minutes ago, da na said:

Might be some sort of issue with Teracopy then... never used it and never had these problems

 

11 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

Never have problem with my Teracopy.

Even when I copied 1TB of files of various sizes.

is that a program?  i would never... just use windows explorer tbh. 

[Poinkachu]

5 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

is that a program?  i would never... just use windows explorer tbh. 

Yeah it's a copier program.

I mainly started using it since with it I can queue and sort which one to be copied first first.

 

For just small amount of files I still use Windows one sometimes.

[Dillpickle23422]

11 hours ago, ToneStar said:

Will Microsoft ever get this right?  Why is it nearly impossible to copy massive amounts of files in windows, especially if you are trying to copy from a computer that is having issues or crashes, then you have to start all over with it slowly indexing everything and whenever there are files present already in a directory it is a nightmare.

I am also using Tera copy and that thing is freezing and not copying when trying to copy to a folder that already had half the files copied to it as well.

I haven't had much of an issue with this. I did deal with something similar when I tried to get a few terrabytes off an old ssd to a new one though.

[Kisai]

21 hours ago, ToneStar said:

Will Microsoft ever get this right?  Why is it nearly impossible to copy massive amounts of files in windows, especially if you are trying to copy from a computer that is having issues or crashes, then you have to start all over with it slowly indexing everything and whenever there are files present already in a directory it is a nightmare.

I am also using Tera copy and that thing is freezing and not copying when trying to copy to a folder that already had half the files copied to it as well.

Use Robocopy.

 

What is really a problem is external drives. It seems they are all universally garbage. I have a bunch of NexStar stuff and they all DIE after a few minutes to a few hours of use, crash the USB bus, crash everything on Windows. 

 

Like why is this even a thing, why is Windows locking writes to all drives while it dicks around with a USB drive that has gone offline.

[Mark Kaine]

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

Use Robocopy.

 

What is really a problem is external drives. It seems they are all universally garbage. I have a bunch of NexStar stuff and they all DIE after a few minutes to a few hours of use, crash the USB bus, crash everything on Windows. 

 

Like why is this even a thing, why is Windows locking writes to all drives while it dicks around with a USB drive that has gone offline.

i have a wd black external drive, fastest hard-drive ive ever seen, no issues. 

 

my other "external" drives are really just internal ones i use with a cheapo usb3 to sata cable, no issues,  quite fast... the only issue i have is certain backports of my motherboard are trash and make my mouse lag when i use them.

 

ps: yeah the last thing i have encountered,  but you can turn that mostly off in settings (idr which exactly tho) but this hasn't happened to me in ages, and i often use several external drives, additionally to the internal ones.

 

funny enough all of this seems to work far better on my cheapo 2017 ideapad than on my desktop,  probably because it doesn't have a pos MSI board, or maybe its the cpu afterall, laptop has an intel, desktop amd.

[Mark Kaine]

13 hours ago, Kisai said:

I have a bunch of NexStar stuff and they all DIE after a few minutes to a few hours of use, crash the USB bus, crash

the only time this happened to me was a Kingston "a400"... internal or external didn't matter, so yeah, it maybe an issue with the drives you're using, my toshiba, Samsung, hitachi, wd drives, none of them show these issues.  

 

ps: HEY I REMEMBERED THAT SETTING! 

 

Power options--> turn harddisk off after --> minutes "0"

 

 

trust me, it doesn't turn off hard-drives now, what it does is let the hard drives manage themselves and they *will* turn off after "xx" time of non use (usually like 10 minutes) 

 

ADDITIONALLY also turn of windows media player scanning for new "media" (not sure where that setting is tho)

 

that's important because now windows wont occupy your drives all the time "indexing" your external drives!

 

(done this all ages ago so memory is fuzzy, but that's it, this *needs* to be done for normal usage of external drives on windows)

 

BONUS fact: my WD black turns itself off instantly automatically when i use "eject" in windows... a sight to see, ive never seen a hard-drive do that, its amazing!