Batch file copy faster???

[SameSelf]

Copying video from my camcorder takes a long time using Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V in Windows Explorer. Recently, I wrote a batch file that does it (in addition to a few other tasks), nothing fancy, just a straight up copy command in a .bat. While testing the batch file, the copy task seemed faster. So I measured the difference.

Windows Explorer reported copying a 7.2 GB file at ~42 MB/s which I verified via stop watch at ~170 seconds.

The batch file method copied at 92 MB/s or in 77 seconds! I kid you not. And this performance gain is consistent, not just a one off from what I can see.

Is anyone else seeing this behavior and know why? IOW, is Windows Explorer doing some special journaling or indexing that I give up when using the batch file method?

FWIW, I am copying from a super fast SSD across USB 3.0 to a SATA3 hdd. So theoretically, the bottleneck is the spinning rust. I am actually pretty excited about this. The next time I have 50 GB of video to ingest, it will only take me 9 minutes versus 20 minutes to copy! I might be able to speed it up with robocopy and multi-threading enabled. Got to test that. I should try copying to my OS SSD and see what speeds I get. Might time to ditch the spinning rust once and for all.

[vhelp]

with win7 64bit ?

I never thought about trying other ways because I thought win7/64bit/6gb ram was superior to old win98/xp home. But I do similar through explorer from my dell inspiron laptop intel i3 built-in microSD to usb3 mem stick, 32GB of files. Also, from usb3 to built-in 750GB HDD.

* from SD to USB3 mem stick, maybe 2 hours
* from USB3 mem stick to HDD, maybe 45 minutes

1. What is the batch command for copying ? There is copy and xcopy. One has to be better than the other.
2. what fat format ?

[Krispy Kritter]

Been present in Windows for awhile, up until Win8 anyway.

> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-ways-to-copy-files-faster-in-windows/

> https://www.raymond.cc/blog/12-file-copy-software-tested-for-fastest-transfer-speed/

[SameSelf]

with win7 64bit ?

I never thought about trying other ways because I thought win7/64bit/6gb ram was superior to old win98/xp home. But I do similar through explorer from my dell inspiron laptop intel i3 built-in microSD to usb3 mem stick, 32GB of files. Also, from usb3 to built-in 750GB HDD.

* from SD to USB3 mem stick, maybe 2 hours
* from USB3 mem stick to HDD, maybe 45 minutes

1. What is the batch command for copying ? There is copy and xcopy. One has to be better than the other.
2. what fat format ?

Yes, my tests were on a Win7 64-bit machine with an i7-3770K and 16 GB of ddr3 ram and both devices are NTFS, if that makes any difference, idk. I need to try it with some USB sticks I have lying around that are FAT32. It has been a long while since I ran winxp so I have no idea if this behavior existed under xp or not. In all honesty, I am just as surprised as you are. I would have never thought that Windows Explorer would be so much slower. But that is why I used a plain copy command to get as close to an apples to apples comparison as possible. I didn't want someone saying, well, of course xcopy or robocopy are faster, duh! The batch command I used for testing was simply the same that you would use in a cmd shell, for example:

copy h:\video.mov e:\video\library\

but be advised that xcopy is old and robocopy is the current Microsoft supported version.

As for your times,

* 32 GB from built-in SD Card to USB 3.0 stick of ~2 hours, that is ~4 MB/s which implies you have a Class 4 card. But that is assuming read speed is the same as write speed, idk. Otherwise something is seriously throttling the speed because even USB 2.0 is capable of ~20 MB/s I believe. Do you get the same speeds writing to the SD Card?

* 32 GB from USB 3.0 stick to hdd of ~45 min or ~12 MB/s. Still quite slow if over USB 2.0 and even if it's a 5400 rpm drive.

Anyway it is simple to test. Just create a batch file with the command like the one above and try it.

[SameSelf]

Been present in Windows for awhile, up until Win8 anyway.

> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-ways-to-copy-files-faster-in-windows/

> https://www.raymond.cc/blog/12-file-copy-software-tested-for-fastest-transfer-speed/

Third party file copy programs from the web, no thanks.

[sum_guy]

You don't have to create a batch file either, you can open a cmd prompt and enter the commands directly. The batch file can be useful when creating commands for multiple files to copy.

Back when I was programming in VB, I remember that using the cut/copy/paste method loaded as much of the file as it could into memory, then it would swap out between the windows swap file and back forth between memory, where as a dos command was simply more direct and allowed for the full speed of whichever drive or device was fastest, it didn't depend on a swap file or memory operations.

[jagabo]

I get the same speed whether I drag/drop from Explorer or use copy from the command line. HD to SSD, about 86 MB/s, both internal SATA drives.

Are you sure the file wasn't cached in memory for the second copy? Are you sure the file went to the same physical location on the hard drive in both cases? There's usually around a 3x difference in speed between inner and outer cylinders.

[Krispy Kritter]

I wasn't inferring that you use any particular tools. The raymond link has speed comparisons between the different tools and even different versions of Windows. Just sharing information. In addition to the differences that you noted with Windows itself. I used to have a link to comparisons for that as well, but can't find it now.