Why didn't Microsoft think of this ?

[Azura]

I used to remember CopyDoubler on Macintosh had this handy feature which accelerated file copying (I assume some compression was involved) and also queued concurrent copying tasks.

On Windows when you launch more than one copy window the disk works like crazy because it's attempting to write three batches of files at once. It would be really handy if it were possible to tell it to queue files like the previous utility I mentionned. If anyone knows of a piece of software that does this let me know.

[Vitamin-Carrot]

your using raid 0?

[Azura]

I have two disks set in RAID 0, yes. But what I mean is it would be more efficient if Windows queued file copy tasks instead of doing them concurrently. It would put less wear and tear on the disk itself.

[thewalkingman]

Computer jargon is spoken in this thread.

[Vitamin-Carrot]

hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmm interesting

if another company had before then it could be a patent thingy stopping them

[gregori]

wtf is RAID 0? :)

[Azura]

It's when you bind two disks together so they act as one. In theory it means 2x read/write speed but in practise it's a little less than that. It's a SCSI thing but recent motherboards support an IDE version.

[zynthetic]

wtf is RAID 0? :)

http://www.ghen.be/raid.jpg

[rex]

http://www.ghen.be/raid.jpg
Awesome!

Azura, it's by no means limited to SCSI. Both IDE and SATA supports it and most new mainboards have RAID 0 and 1 support onboard.

[ElectricSheep]

Just remember that if you do RAID 0, your are twice as likely to experience a total failure than you were using two separate drives. If one drive dies out of the set, you lose everything.

[Crotale]

The trick to RAID 0 is to get hard drives that are RAID compatible. RAID 1 (mirroring) does not require RAID compatible drives, as neither mirror disk directly affects data being written to the other. But with RAID 0, you are essentially splitting information to go to each drive, so if one does fail at all, you have a total system failure.

However, you CAN use non-RAID compatible drives, but if you use Windows, then Windows handles the boot check and if for some reason it takes too long to check, Windows will give you a boot error and you will not be able to recover. The reason for this is that normally the hard drive has its own controller and thus does its own integrity checks upon bootup. But when placed in a RAID 0 configuration, Windows wants to take over that task. A RAID compatible drive will hand-off this task to Windows; non-RAID compatible drives are unable to do this.

[Azura]

Crotale, that's one of the inconveniences of using RAID 0. Since the motherboard controller takes over as the middle man the internal diagnostics of individual drives are ignored.

Awesome!

Azura, it's by no means limited to SCSI. Both IDE and SATA supports it and most new mainboards have RAID 0 and 1 support onboard.

Indeed. The logic handling this is inside the controller and not the interface, so virtually any type of drive could be used.

[Hadmar]

I hope that feature was optional. Imagine copying a 20GB database. Now image you won't be able to copy anything else until that is done. I can see how it can be useful occasionally, though.

[Azura]

Well, that's a valid observation. Thankfully the software I mentionned was clever enough to queue the smallest files first. This was something that was released about fifteen years ago. Computers have gotten more powerful since then but there hasn't been that much advance in terms of innovative software.

[JaFO]

innovation and MS Windows only fit in a single sentence if the word 'not' is involved ;)
I doubt that MS is stopped by something as simple as a mere patent, because they've got the money, lawyers and resources to get rid of such things.

It's more likely something that they don't consider useful or that may even be integrated into the OS itself.
//

I wonder how a utility would be useful, since just doing the queing yourself (by not starting multiple copy-commands, until the first set is finished ;)) is simple enough.

[Azura]

I wonder how a utility would be useful, since just doing the queing yourself (by not starting multiple copy-commands, until the first set is finished ;)) is simple enough.

That would be doable but fastidious.

Take my case. I have a 600 GB raid 0 set that has been filling up with junk (isos, game movies, documentation, programming stuff, ebooks, etc) for the last two years. I finally got the courage to get a one terabyte external drive so I can archive some of the files I want to keep.

The problem is that these files are all over the place which kind of forces me to launch three or more simultaneous copy tasks. Seeing that the files in question are often 200 MB upwards and I'll usually copy over a whole folder at a time, one copy task can take a few minutes to complete. This causes unnecessary wear and tear as it attempts to simultaneously copy from different spots on a drive.

P.S: I'm thinking of limiting the size of the internal drives on my next machine and putting any seldom used files directly on an external. That way I can aim for performance while using space the space I have for things like video editing.

[JaFO]

then don't launch multiple tasks.
Just 'select all' and let Windows sort it all out.
That's one task and the os queues all the files for you.

I think that you're worrying a little too much (unless that disk is about to die) and trying to act smarter than the OS.
In theory you might want to consider copying the image of the drive. I think there are partitioning programs that can do that kind of stuff by taking the entire disk at once instead of copying files.
And you should consider defragging your disks regularly as well ...

[Azura]

then don't launch multiple tasks.
Just 'select all' and let Windows sort it all out.
That's one task and the os queues all the files for you.

That's easier said then done. When one batch of files is on F:, another is on E: and yet another is on D:, it's going to be more than a pain than anything just waiting for one task to complete.

I think that you're worrying a little too much (unless that disk is about to die) and trying to act smarter than the OS.

Maybe but having a drive head zip from one location to another several times a minutes can't be good. Plus my setup is more than three years old (I still have an Athlon XP).

In theory you might want to consider copying the image of the drive. I think there are partitioning programs that can do that kind of stuff by taking the entire disk at once instead of.
And you should consider defragging your disks regularly as well ...

I could do that if I had a little organisation but, shamed as I am to say it, the drives on the PC are a complete mess and there's just as much junk as useful stuff. I've been stashing files left and right according to how much room I had available on all of the drives. It really needs a major cleanup and there's near 600GB of it.

I'll consider cloning on the new machine.

[Hadmar]

Well as a quick and dirty way, write a batch that does a copy via xcopy. While that runs you can just add new lines / copy "jobs" to the batch that get executed after the ones above are done.

[JaFO]

That's easier said then done. When one batch of files is on F:, another is on E: and yet another is on D:, it's going to be more than a pain than anything just waiting for one task to complete.

As Hadmar suggests : write a batch-file. That way you wouldn't have to wait.


Maybe but having a drive head zip from one location to another several times a minutes can't be good. Plus my setup is more than three years old (I still have an Athlon XP).

That's what harddrives are designed to do for ages.
I suggest that you don't even consider what defragging does to your drive as that moves the heads from one location to another for hours disks that have less capacity than yours ...
You really are worrying more than a little too much.


I could do that if I had a little organisation but, shamed as I am to say it, the drives on the PC are a complete mess and there's just as much junk as useful stuff. I've been stashing files left and right according to how much room I had available on all of the drives. It really needs a major cleanup and there's near 600GB of it.
then now is an excellent time for such a clean-up indeed. :)
I doubt you can automate this process though.

[Vitamin-Carrot]

ok thats it ... ima go raid 0 some pies