Ultimate: it takes forever to copy files to another drive..

hi,

lately it's been taking me an usually long time to copy data files from
my HD to an external HD... I'm copying a folder now that is 19.0 GB...
when it was "calculating" it went up all the way to 80 days before it
started actually copying the files.. now it's copying, it says "30 mins
remaining..." and it has just copied about 10%..

also, I've been getting this alert sometimes when copying files:

http://www.mayacove.com/misc/copy.gif
(usu. have gotten these only with JPG's, which come from my dig
camera (SD card..)

thank you..

You can try disabling write caching. Rightclick the drive in the Computer
app. Properties. Hardware tab, highlight the drive there, Properties button,
"Policies" tab.

You might also try the ''ReadyBoost" tab.

There are known issues with network file transfer rates, but usb external
drive transfer rates are generally quite good im my experience.

That particular problem is more a problem with the algorithm used to
calculate the time remaining, which certainly needs to be updated. You
actually get the same behaviour with XP, but it's less visible. It's best
usually to just ignore those time remaining statements, and just focus on
how long it actually takes from start to finish.


Also 19 GB is actually quite a lot of data. I still remember the days (not
THAT long ago) when it took 2-3 minutes to transfer a 1k program. Saying
it's taking an 'unusually long time' is pretty subjective (figures please).
A watched kettle never boils.

The last issue is perhaps from copying to a non-ntfs formatted drive (eg
fat32), where certain metadata / photo tags etc can't be stored (?).

It is possible that your external HDD is FAT32 and Vista is NTFS. then you
will get that message. I am not sure it is that critical. You should examine
your images (pictures) after copying.

The system has difficult time calculating actual time needed to copy
files/folders. It is not a Vista problem. It is universal (XP also). The
time shown are erratic at best. May drop from 8 hours to 30 min and a few
seconds. Nothing new. Should not bother you.

thank you very much.. this helped a lot... it finally worked.. it took
a long time, but it worked... it took about 45 mins to copy about 55 GB
(yes, a lot, all my photos I've taken since I purchased my dig. camera
a year ago.. I am and have been a serious photographer for many years,
it would be devastating for me to lose my photographs.. at one point
when I was copying them I almost hit "cut" instead of "copy" -
dangerous.. I have a Western Digital drive, is 2nd one, previous one I
dropped it, it broke, can't read from it anymore.. this is also
dangerous.. anybody have any "tips" on safest way to do backups of
important files??? (I'm backing them up to two diff drives at this
point, they are both the same kind of drive..)

thank you very much...

How about burning them to DVD? I know, it will take a number of DVD's to
back up 55 Gig, but as a second backup.... it's pretty safe.

not a bad idea (although one DVD only holds 4.7 GB, I would need LOTS of
DVD's, and lots of time..)

it might be the safest route, however, because: I forgot to mention in
my last post, I did what Mark suggested (first response to this OP) and
in props for the drive set it to "optimize for performance" (he didn't
say that, but that was obvious choice, and that's what worked..) now it
says right in that dialogue that if you set it to this setting you
should only disconnect the drive by clicking on "remove external device
safely" or sthg like that in system notif's tray.. I couldn't find that
icon last night when I was ready to turn my machine off, so I didn't.. I
turned off the machine and left the drive connected..

tonight I boot the machine and right away get a notif. that Windows
doesn't recognize the drive.. I clicked on the "remove device safely.."
icon (NOW it was there..) but nothing happened.. I disconnected the
drive manually, then connected it again and, for the first time, it
prompted me to install software.. this I had never seen.. had never seen
this slick black dialoge for installing sw.. (screenshot:
http://www.mayacove.com/misc/ss_wd.gif)

and among the choices of sw to install I don't know if I need any of
them (what do I need google sw for?????)

so... the mystery continues here... I don't know right now if this
thing can read all the data I backed up last night and if I need to
install any of this sw.. oh brother...