Question Fastest copy

bba_tcg

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Apr 8, 2010
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thecomputerguylbb.com
I don't know if it's the absolute fastest since I've never timed it, but robocopy is, hands down, a much more robust, useful tool than xcopy. I've never really done anything with the powershell tool.
 

balloonshark

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2008
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I've been using Teracopy free. I usually only use it when moving several files or folder. No idea how it's speed compares to others.
 
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Jul 27, 2020
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Which is faster?

1. Xcopy
2. Robocopy
3. Copy-Item (Powershell)
Xcopy and Copy-Item may be single threaded. Robocopy by default uses 8 threads to copy 8 files simultaneously (you can increase the thread count up to the number of your physical cores). But obviously the storage medium should be able to handle writing files in parallel. If you are reading from and writing to an SSD, Robocopy may potentially perform the fastest. I would suggest timing the copying of some folder with a large number of variable sized files. Do Robocopy first. Reboot. Then try Xcopy. As soon as the time exceeds 30 seconds more, abort it, reboot and finally test copy-item.
 
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Martha45

Junior Member
Sep 15, 2025
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I've been using Teracopy free. I usually only use it when moving several files or folder. No idea how it's speed compares to others.
Teracopy is great, and the speed is excellent. There are some comparisons between it and some tools like Robocopy, FastCopy, Goodsync, GS RichCopy 360, and Rclone. It was great compared to these tools