How can I tranfer files faster?
Using XP.
I used to be able to transfer heaps at once with another computer.
Now, I can’t. I tried to cut-paste one folder, then another. But the second didn’t even start until I repeated the action once the first was finished.
I realise it might be actually wiser to leave things like this, but what if I’m in a hurry. Also, sometimes when cutting-pasting more than one folder at once, I get an error message that obliges me to cancel, re perform the action for each time.
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7 Answers
What’s the error message? What’s the CPU speed? What type of media are you transfering onto? If it’s USB is it 1.0 or 2.0?
Actually, I think free space might be an issue; if not total free space then contiguous free space. When teh computer can’t find a big hunk of contiguous free space to put stuff, it can get slow at best as it tries to split a file and put the pieces wherever they may fit.
Either that, or this particular XP install has finally accumulated enough “bit rot” to start doing funny things like that. Personally, I was re-installing XP about every 9–12 months because of accumulated errors that could not be fixed any other way.
@jerv Unrelated to question, but have you considered just immaging the system to re-clone it to the drive?
@XOIIO Why bother? I stopped using XP a couple of years ago :D
You don’t specify the method of connection over which the transfers occur. Assuming that the transfers are taking place over an Ethernet LAN, one problem you might be experiencing (particularly with WinXP) is that of buffer bloat. Basically, the default setting of network devices are not valid when dealing with fast, high-bandwidth networks and should be adjusted for better results.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314053 contains instructions for adjusting your system’s TCP buffer size, if you want to take the risk.
As @XOIIO has pointed out, you haven’t really provided enough information to get a proper answer to this question. As @jerv alludes, there are some simple things you should check before poking around in the Registry. Also, XP is an obsolete and somewhat badly broken kludge of an OS- you should consider reinstalling (in the short term only) and upgrading (to linux, maybe) soon.
More information and detail is needed. What is listed is simply not the normal function of XP.
Windows Explorer is not fast by any means.
Open a cmd prompt and use xcopy or get robocopy from the xp resource kit.
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