Windows 7 file transfer weirdness

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,257
Hi
I've been moving some data between hard drives. They are large, relatively slow SATA drives, and, I'm getting about 95-110 MB/sec file transfer rates, if I transfer one at a time.

I recently tried 5 different file transfers at the same time, and, the transfer rates got REALLY low, like 6-15MB/sec. I was ok with this, thinking that when the first file completed, the large amount of bandwidth it was using, maybe 60 MB/sec, would be transfered to the other files being transfered. NO, they stayed at the same, very slow rates.

I canceled those transfers, and seem to be limited to single file transfers if I want to take full advantage of the drives speed limit. WEIRD. Thought by 7 it would adapt...
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,719
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Nope. If you tell it to do a bunch of simultaneous file transfers, it will do what you ask. If you choose a bunch of files at once and copy them somewhere, you have given the OS the choice to do them sequentially, and it will.

Of course, if all your drives were SSDs, you wouldn't have this problem ;)
 

BingBangBop

Storage is cool
Joined
Nov 15, 2009
Messages
667
Yes, 1 file at a time == sequential and few seeks. 5 files at a time == no sequential data transfer, with lots of seeks. Seeks kill transfer rates. Much better to do the file transfers sequentially than to do them in parallel.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,454
Location
USA
Hi
I've been moving some data between hard drives. They are large, relatively slow SATA drives, and, I'm getting about 95-110 MB/sec file transfer rates, if I transfer one at a time.

I recently tried 5 different file transfers at the same time, and, the transfer rates got REALLY low, like 6-15MB/sec. I was ok with this, thinking that when the first file completed, the large amount of bandwidth it was using, maybe 60 MB/sec, would be transfered to the other files being transfered. NO, they stayed at the same, very slow rates.

I canceled those transfers, and seem to be limited to single file transfers if I want to take full advantage of the drives speed limit. WEIRD. Thought by 7 it would adapt...
:flower:


Didn't we discuss that limitation when the Barracuda IV came out? Or was it another drive? It is totally normal, BTW.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,257
Nope. If you tell it to do a bunch of simultaneous file transfers, it will do what you ask. If you choose a bunch of files at once and copy them somewhere, you have given the OS the choice to do them sequentially, and it will.

Of course, if all your drives were SSDs, you wouldn't have this problem ;)

7 tells me I do get some REALLY insane file transfer speeds, like 800 MB/sec, copying from the X-25's to the other SSD, and, sometimes they start really high, with smaller files, and slowly slow down to 150 MB/sec.
 
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