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If I copy to two drives on each computer that would take twice as long... Right?

alfa147x

Lifer
Jul 14, 2005
29,307
106
106
Situation:
It takes me 5 mins to copy to each machine then 30 mins to each USB drive. 15 computers in this room. I have another room with 15. I have one cf card as the source. It takes me 5 mins to copy files to each computer.

Question:
If I copy to two drives on each computer that would take twice as long... Right?

I have 30 drives and 7ish GB of data :\

Thanks!
Alfa
 

StarTech

Senior member
Dec 22, 1999
859
14
81
I am not sure if this is one of those "if two trains move at 100 MPH.." or is for real. :)

I am not clear as to what the final goal is.
Is it to load the stuff on the CF card in 30 USB drives ?
Is it to load it on 30 computers and 30 USB drives?
None of the above ?
 

razel

Platinum Member
May 14, 2002
2,337
93
101
Just want to be clear, previously you copied from the CF to the computer HDD. Once the file is complete, you then copied from the HDD onto a USB drive on the computer. Now you want to simultaneously copy from the CF to the HDD and while that is occuring, issue another copy from the CF to the USB drive.

It should not take twice as long since reading from a solid state CF doesn't affect it as much as reading from an HDD. If you read simultaneous from an HDD it's head will trash around.

Curious if these computers are networked or have Internet connection? If they're networked you can copy from a shared folder or if they have Internet/Intranet (all you need is the http protocol) connection you run a very simple web server like AnalogX Simple Server, point it to the file and download via HTTP off one computer. Simple Server last that I used, is one executable. You can even run it off the CF.
 

alfa147x

Lifer
Jul 14, 2005
29,307
106
106
This is what I did: The source was one CF card -> 30 flash drives. I had 30 computers to use. So what I did was transfer the data to one computer then when that was done I copied data from the computer to an empty drive. With the completed drive I copied the data to another computer. Once that was done I used that machine to copy data to another empty drive. By the end I was using 20 machines. Took 2 hours :\
 

alfa147x

Lifer
Jul 14, 2005
29,307
106
106
Just want to be clear, previously you copied from the CF to the computer HDD. Once the file is complete, you then copied from the HDD onto a USB drive on the computer. Now you want to simultaneously copy from the CF to the HDD and while that is occuring, issue another copy from the CF to the USB drive.

It should not take twice as long since reading from a solid state CF doesn't affect it as much as reading from an HDD. If you read simultaneous from an HDD it's head will trash around.

Curious if these computers are networked or have Internet connection? If they're networked you can copy from a shared folder or if they have Internet/Intranet (all you need is the http protocol) connection you run a very simple web server like AnalogX Simple Server, point it to the file and download via HTTP off one computer. Simple Server last that I used, is one executable. You can even run it off the CF.

they were networked but the they have it quite locked down.
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
How long would it take to copy straight from the CF to another CF, with a fast USB CF reader? I don't know of a generalized way to solve the problem without special HW/SW, but I would think cutting out the slow drive middleman, a few card readers might be able to simplify and speed up the process.