Copying files is always extreamly slow

It usually takes about 4 minutes to copy 300mb of files... What causes this?

 

It depends on a number of factors;
the file system being used, the size of the individual files, the rotational rate of the platters if a disk drive, the throughput of the BUS, the type/efficiency of the drive controller, if copying across a network, the type of NIC; wireless or wired, the throughput of the network; 10/100/1000.

I can copy a 1 gigabyte file from my 7200 RPM HDD to my SSD in about 3 seconds.
Doing it in reverse takes about 5 seconds.

Copying that same file from one 7200 RPM HDD to another 7200 RPM HDD takes 11 seconds.
Copying that same file from one 7200 RPM HDD to another across a gigabit network takes about 30 seconds.

Transfers via wireless is about 1/3 of that speed.
Also copying several small files takes longer than copying a few large ones. If that 300 mbs is made up of 10,000 files, the filesystem still has to track each file during the process, that is what eats up time and overhead if moving large numbers of small files.

My guess is you have a HDD with a rotational speed of 5400 RPM's and maybe transferring over wireless?

More info needed........

 

copying from my hd to flash drive takes longer than that.

 

That sounds about the speed of some very old USB 1.0 flash drives.

 

Sounds like ur disk is bein thrashed constantly.

 

I always thought that cut and paste worked a lot faster than the copying myself.
But you need to copy and paste sometimes and not move original files.

 

don't know if this applies but not all usb pen drives are born equal. check for read/write speed beforebuying. also, usb version does matter. if this is not the case and we assume you're not using non-windows filesystems (like, say, XFS) ,but maybe you have a very fragmented hard drive, or your system has issues, or the drive may be about to fail, seriously you should be more specific.

 

Sometimes it's faster from one folder to another than making the duplicate on the same screen. I don't get it.:smilielol5:

 

Cut and paste is not the correct way to copy files