Windows File Copy Hell
By Lawrence
I have been working on my new trading server lately and one of the old problems of Windows just gave me a hard time. Luckily I already know what to do and the problem is solved quickly. Here is the whole story.
Windows Fail Badly When Dealing With Large Files And Large Number Of Files
If you ever try to copy files of 500+ Mb in size from one USB drive to another on Windows, you will experience random failures from one of the hard drive disconnecting, copy failure, to corrupting the hard disks.
Remember it is not your fault and it is also not necessary that you have a bad hard disk.
Windows have this problem for eons and people at Microsoft never fix it.
The other problem is that Windows would use more time to copy a group of files than copying them one by one. If you choose a large number of files to copy, the total time it will take is much more than necessary. It does not matter if you have the latest fastest top of the line hardware. Windows would just eat up a lot of your computer’s processing power and take forever to copy the files.
Solution 1: Get TeraCopy
TeraCopy is how file copy should be done if Microsoft were doing its job.
It is a free utility that you can install onto Windows and then the file copy problems will go away most of the time.
Following is a link to the site,
http://codesector.com/teracopy
Solution 2: Use Disk Imaging
As mentioned last time when my old trading server was toasted, I have image of my disk drives to restore from.
That is the other way to copy large files and large number of files.
Simply image your hard disk if you are about to copy most of the content to another drive or computer, then restore the files from the image. It is way faster and more reliable than using Windows itself.
There are many disk imaging apps available on the market. Choose one you like as they varies in features and workflow.
