Bulk file copying utilities-suggestion needed

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ranjan2001

ranjan2001

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I often need to move/copy 200-300GB of data within internal hdds & I find that windows choke on that , it reports 10-14 hrs to do if I do that at one go, where as if I copy manually few selected folders its done in 2-3 hrs, but I have to sit & do it personally.

Why is it that moving large data takes over 10 hrs using Sata2 hdd?

What file copying utilities are available for doing such bulk data move which can speed up this job?
 
I used it in past & didn't like it, though its better than explorer copying but does not do much in terms of speed. I get 8-10mb/s speed which is too slow.

THe file copying speed is what I am looking after, it should have 30-40mb/s speed. I have fast disk (70-120mb/s) & dual core with 4gb ram The total data I need to copy/move is over 3TB which is going to take days if I have to manually do it.
 
windows is not at fault many a times. many factors come into play.

even the hardware can cause trouble.

are both the hdd's running in the same udma/dma mode?

check sata cables too.

too less ram can be a bottleneck.

what is cpu used?

in my machine a 4gb file copies in less than 20 seconds (max), between two sata2 hdds. even transferring around 100-120gb took around 10-15mins max.

edit: for a good alternative copy software - TotalCopy
 
4gb file copies in less than 20 seconds (max)
Click to expand...
WHAT??? I have always wanted that to happen.

transferring around 100-120gb took around 10-15mins max.
Click to expand...
That is quite a speed, right now I am copying in background 112gb data from 320Gb disk (72mb/s) to 1.5TB (120mb/s) disk & its over 1.5 hrs & its 35% copied so its going to take 5-7 hrs.

are both the hdd's running in the same udma/dma mode?
Click to expand...
Yes they are, here is the screen shot



But for sure there seems to be something set wrong in my system which I am not aware of.

I have formatted the system & I am using 2 new disk seagate which are fast 72-120mb/s I cant figure out so need help in getting the optimized speed.

My system spec is as follows.

XP SP3

E6300@1.86Ghz,

P5B-Dlx Wifi,

4GB Transcend DDR2 800Mhz,

XFX 7600GT,

Lenovo 20"Widescreen LCD,

Seagate SATA2 HDD 1.5TB & 320gb

BIOS is updated to latest

I am using bios setting "set sata as IDE"

Will setting sata to AHCI speed up things???? (I need integrated AHCI drivers then for XP)

system reinstalled 2 days ago.
 
I have read about the freeware YCopy being one of the faster file copying utilities, I have not run it yet so I cannot confirm this.

File Copy

2 days back I transferred around 600GB of data between 2 HDDs using Total Commander and it took around 1.5 hour to complete @60 - 80MB/s. I had done a screen capture during this file copy and here is a picture ....

copyspeeddy9.jpg
 
Burst Copy also work good. I have been using it which shows 60-70 MB/s speed

Check following settings also

Device Manager-IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers-Primary/Secondary channels (check all one by one)-Advance setting - Transfer mode-DMA (If available)

If above settings are there, it should be fine.
 
Get tera copy, at most the difference between speeds wil be very less as speed is dependent on the hardware rather than software, there's only so much that clever caching can do..
 
ranjan2001 said:
Yes they are, here is the screen shot


But for sure there seems to be something set wrong in my system which I am not aware of.
Click to expand...

That is the wrong channel's picture you have posted - it shows no drives attached :) Look for one showing an input for "Current Transfer Mode"

Have you installed the Motherboards latest Chipset drivers ? Your problem could be because these drivers are not installed.
 
I usually do it, rather move plus 500 gigs of data & it takes typically 6-7-8 hrs. What i do is a small trick, I make my PC an FTP server, have users C for C:, D for D: & so on & then run an ftp client to login for the specific drive. This way I "download" stuff from one HDD to another. This method has some major benefits that I really like.

1. FTP is sequential data download, i.e. file after file. Typically it should take longer but infact its faster than file copy at random since the payload is entirely on one READ/WRITE operation.

2. Since its sequential, if there is error in transferring a file, I can identify it in the queue. the file copy keeps on & then I can re-queue the failed ones. A normal file copy would stop randomly on an error.

3. If the PC crashes, or u have to shut down in betw. the transfer due to power failure or something else, u can always RESUME the queue, thus saving huge time.

hope this neat trick helps, I've been following it over 8 years now & have never thought of any other solution..
 
Eazy said:
That is the wrong channel's picture you have posted - it shows no drives attached :) Look for one showing an input for "Current Transfer Mode"

Have you installed the Motherboards latest Chipset drivers ? Your problem could be because these drivers are not installed.
Click to expand...

After you said i checked that I have installed Intel chipset drivers & they show it in the device manager.



Is something still wrong.

Should I install from the CD 2yrs old

may be I am missing some settings & the hardware is running slow.

I have downloaded many of the software which you guys mentioned but none have been able to get that 60mb/s speed. Max I am getting is the same as i was getting with regular copy method. So it seems some hardware/driver issue is creating this problem.
 
You are showing a screenie of a channel which has no drives attached. Look at attached picture where you can see that the HDD is showing as DMA 5 and the other port which has no drive attached shows "not applicable" like in your screenie.

snap10cb6.jpg


also confirm that your HDD setting is like this ....

snap11hp1.jpg
 
I have checked & rechecked but can't figure out why is it that current transfer mode is greyed out in my case.

I confirm that my settings are exactly as per ur 2 screen shots except current transfer mode is greyed out.
 
File copy was too slow in Vista after SP1 it was improved a lo, but getting 95-120 is quite a speed.

Are you copying to same disk another partition then speed will be fastest

copying to another hdd will get slower depending upon the speed of that disk
 
ranjan2001 said:
Are you copying to same disk another partition then speed will be fastest
copying to another hdd will get slower depending upon the speed of that disk
Click to expand...

are you sure???
when i copy from 1 hdd to another, i get much faster speeds (sometimes to the tune of 80-90 MB/s), wheras betn 2 partitions on the same disk it is typically 30-40 MB/s (using vsta 32bit SP1)

i havent messed around with any dma settings...everything is default
 
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