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Hard drives, partitions, and moving files

B

BachelorNumber1

Member
Why is it that when moving a file from one partition to another, on the same physical drive, that it acts like its moving it to another physical drive? Its slow and CPU-intensive. I had created a D: drive for all my downloads, so that when I dl a file I want I can move it to my Movies/MP3/etc folder on C:. When I move them, its as slow as moving files from my floppy drive. Is there a way around this? I created the partition for downloads so I wouldnt corrupt program files, etc.
 

>Why is it that... it acts like its moving it to another physical drive?

Because as far as the OS is concerned, it is another physical drive. The point of the partitioning scheme is to create
logical boundaries that the OS can use to organize data.

> Its slow and CPU-intensive.

It would be slower than moving the files within the same drive, but it should'nt be that slow.

> When I move them, its as slow as moving files from my floppy drive.

It sounds like there is a problem somewhere else than the drive, even a slow hard drive should be able to
transfer files between partitions much faster than floppy drive speeds.

You did not mention the type of hard drive (make and model) or connection it is on. Also you might check that DMA
is enabled for the drive.



Is there a way around this? I created the partition for downloads so I wouldnt corrupt program files, etc.
 
OK, I exaggerated a bit...it might not be as slow as my floppy drive, but it seems very slow since I'm moving 700Mb files at 7minutes (I guess thats about 1.667Mb/s). Moving files within a drive is almost instantaneous, but my drive transfers at 16.6MB in multi-word DMA. I have a WD 27Gb 7200RPM drive on the primary IDE cable. DMA seems to be enabled..its not located in the same place as Win98, but in Device Manager the Primary IDE Channel says "DMA if available".

My drive supports Ultra ATA/66 but I dont know how to check if its "activated". Device Manager only shows the "DMA if available", and PIO mode. Is there a way to test my transfer speeds to see what mode I'm using?
 
You'll never see your drives full transfer rate moving a file between partitions becuase during the copy the heads are constantly seeking between the file being read and the file being written. Simply downloading files directly to the partition that you wish to store them will solve the problem. btw downloading files poses virtually no risk of corruption to the other files on the drive.
 
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