TC - Too slow copy over the network !

[MonkY]

Hmm, and how do SlowCopy or FileCopy (or what those names were) perform? You can find them on http://clubtotal.free.fr/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=2 .

TIA
Roman

I've downloaded the utilities.. testing:

Slowcopy with 3MB cache (fastest for me)
Download from network: 20MB/s
Upload to network: 18MB/s
Copy from one WD 10.000 RPM to another: 25MB/s
Plus: IT CRASHED A LOT OF TIMES. VERY UNRELIABLE (at least with TC v6.02)
All the results i've read with perfmon.msc, as the internal transfer of slowcopy was showing very strange results (like 70MB/s although perfmon was showing me only 25MB/s.. and then i used a clock and measured for big files.. and it was really 25MB/s not 70MB/s.. plus it was fluctuating a lot like from 70MB/s to 5MB/s.. even the graph bar would somtime stop... so Slowcopy didn't helped)

Filecopy
Download from network: 3-4MB/s
Upload to network: 3-4MB/s
Copy from one WD 10.000 RPM to another: 3-4MB/s
Plus: Filecopy created temporary files if the file copy wasn't completed... undeletable ones (at least not until filecopy killed from Task Manager... )

So untill now, Explorer is the best ! Damn... this is bad.. really bad.

[icfu]

SlowCopy works great here. Regarding your results I think that there are some very strange things going on in your box.

Copy&Paste via Explorer setting should work exactly the same like Explorer itself. Right click copy&paste should work, too, because it uses the explorer as well.

ghisler?

Icfu

[ghisler(Author)]

Have you tried the "use compatibility mode for these drives" option? It uses CopyFileEx and is often the fastest.

The big block copy mode is only the fastest when copying large files WITHIN the same drive - try it! When copying blocks between two drives, this mode is about half as fast as the maximum, because it reads and writes alternatively (not at the same time). This is done so the perfomance doesn't go to 0 for people who don't set the partition information correctly...

[MonkY]

Have you tried the "use compatibility mode for these drives" option? It uses CopyFileEx and is often the fastest.

The big block copy mode is only the fastest when copying large files WITHIN the same drive - try it! When copying blocks between two drives, this mode is about half as fast as the maximum, because it reads and writes alternatively (not at the same time). This is done so the perfomance doesn't go to 0 for people who don't set the partition information correctly...

YES ! The GOD has spoken ! I was waiting for this ! And now, with compatibility mode set on my mapped drives, gone for 40MB/s upload and 40MB/s download !!!

Total Commander 6.02 Not Tweaked
Download from network: 23MB/s
Upload to network: 18MB/s
Copy from one WD 10.000 RPM to another: 28MB/s

Microsoft Explorer
Download from network: 33MB/s
Upload to network: 33MB/s
Copy from one WD 10.000 RPM to another: 46MB/s

Total Commander 6.02 Tweaked
using compatibility mode for network drives
and setup the same physical on all drives
Download from network: 40MB/s
Upload to network: 40MB/s
Copy from one WD 10.000 RPM to another: 40MB/s

Well, seems like i bet on the winner ! Ghisler you're the best (once again ) ! TC is the best ! Thank you very much... now back to copy/move stuff

EDITED: Very BAD news... Although this method seems a lot faster, it's simply killing my network computers. While this kind of copy is done (even on hard disks able to go at 50-60MB/s) i can't use any of the network PC's. The CPU utilization goes so high you can hardly use CTRL+ALT+DEL ... and because of this, soon the transfer start droping to a very fluctuating and strange way (from 3KB/s to 10MB/s)...

OH Nooooooooooooo.....

SECOND EDIT: Well, before saying anything else.. i think i will check again all my network drivers, settings, compare and stuff.. and i'll get back with results... very strange.. really strange...

[JackFoo]

Hmm, I tried fidling with compatibility mode and to my surprise there was a performance increase (~20% +) both on local drives (C, D) and networked ones.

A surprise because help states:

The compatibility mode is useful for special drives, which cause problems with the default or big file mode, e.g. USB memory sticks.

Which seems to imply it fixes problems and isn't superior to normal mode. Also, MSDN seems to say that CopyFileEx is a superset of CopyFile which means it uses the same routines and performance should be comparable or worse rather than better...

P.S. I didn't time the copy, I compared speeds as stated by TC so it might be that there is no real difference and it's some kind of a flux with speed represantation/calculation.

Cheers.

[Black Dog]

[face=courier]On 18-03-2004 11:11:14 +0000 JackFoo wrote:

Hi, Jack.

J> Hmm, I tried fidling with compatibility mode

One thing about compatibility mode - it doesn't support append file. Just in case you won't find it one day you'll need it :).

BTW, do you confirm this (just have remembered you reported about the same problem two years ego)?[/face]

[JackFoo]

Well, I seem to remeber something about rar.exe being weird on non 8.3 files, but I don't remeber if it was the same problem (and I guess this post is dead since the last DB crashed). Anyhow I've since moved to using winrar.exe since I can set it to work in background with lower priority.

P.S. Christian, can you explain the differences that stem from using CopyFileEx (compatibility mode).

Cheers.

[Black Dog]

[face=courier]On 20-03-2004 17:45:54 +0000 JackFoo wrote:

J> Well, I seem to remeber something about rar.exe being weird
J> on non 8.3 files, but I don't remeber if it was the same
J> problem

Well, it was something like this:

"It seems as if commander or is it rar.exe (with winrar.exe it doesn't happen) somehow compresses the contents twice, once for normal long windows format and once for dos 8.3 format... Is it a known issue or new?"

J> Anyhow I've since moved to using winrar.exe since I can set
J> it to work in background with lower priority.

_____________transmission_from_rar.txt____________

-ri<p>[:<s>]
Set priority and sleep time. Available only in RAR for Windows.
This switch is used to regulate system load by RAR in a
multitasking environment. The possible task priority values are
from 0 to 15. When <p> is equal to 0, the default task priority
is used, 1 corresponding to the lowest task priority, 15 - to
the highest. The sleep time <s> is a value from 0 to 1000
(milliseconds). This is the period of time that RAR will give
back to system after every read or write during the packing or
unpacking operation. The sleep time setting is useful when
several tasks with the same priority are running in the system.

Example:

execute RAR with default priority and 10 ms of sleep after
each read or write

rar a -r -sfx -ri0:10 backup *.*

_______________end_of_transmission________________[/face]

[JackFoo]

Whoa, that's it, where did you get that message? Yeah, I knew about the -ri , but winrar causes less problems and there isn't any difference so I don't really care using one or the other.

[MonkY]

Well, the discussion got a little off topic. I received even an explication from Ghisler (the master !) and i understood "The fastest is compatibility mode, but it will also slow down the machines, so users can probably not work on them". But what i don't understand is, WHY DOESN'T THIS SLOWDOWN HAPPEN WHEN USING NORMAL WINDOWS EXPLORER ?!?
Well... i am forced now uncheck the compatibility mode... and use for everyday copy/move files over the network Microsoft Explorer... and TC for other things... that's the situation... hope it can be fixed. Good luck with this !