Vista rant - transfering files to USB thumb drive

imported_KuJaX

Platinum Member
May 29, 2004
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I am transferring 120mb of data onto a USB Thumb Drive using Vista. It says estimated time 2 hours and it has already been going for 30 minutes. I know there are many factors such as how fast the USB thumb drive is, but I just did the exact same thing on a Windows XP machine and it took 15 minutes.

WTF, why would it take more than 2hours in Vista when it took 15 minutes in Windows XP?
 

FoBoT

No Lifer
Apr 30, 2001
63,084
15
81
fobot.com
that isn't Vista's fault, i have moved more than that much faster

don't blame Vista for world hunger either
 

rise

Diamond Member
Dec 13, 2004
9,116
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91
i've used vista 32 and now run vista 64 and i sometimes transfer 200+ mb. it has never taken anymore than ~10 minutes.
 

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
27,730
8
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Originally posted by: theprodigalrebel
Is your USB port working in 1.1 mode, rather than 2.0? Might need an updated USB driver.

That was my first thought as well.

Vista does seem to copy files considerably slower than XP though. Its something that MS is supposed to fix in SP1, I believe.
 

Ricochet

Diamond Member
Oct 31, 1999
6,390
19
81
My Super Talent 4gig thumb drive is not even recognized in Vista and no available driver download off of the OEM website.
 

Fritzo

Lifer
Jan 3, 2001
41,920
2,161
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You have to keep hitting "Conirm or Deny" messages with each file. That slows it down :)
 

ric1287

Diamond Member
Nov 29, 2005
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i run into this problem as well, makes me want to punch the computer in the face.
 

pulse8

Lifer
May 3, 2000
20,860
1
81
Originally posted by: KuJaX
Okay, so half of you guys say "don't blame Vista" and the other half say "I have the same problem."

Only one other person has said they've had the same problem.

I also have Vista and have never had a problem.
 

JasonCoder

Golden Member
Feb 23, 2005
1,893
1
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Just for giggles, temporarily turn off Defender and UAC. If that makes a difference there could be something at issue with the "ownership" of the files you are transferring. If that were the case I'd run a "its mine" command to recursively process the ACLs and such. I had to do this with a harddrive from a previous build.
 

ppdes

Senior member
May 16, 2004
739
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I've noticed Vista is much slower at copying large file trees around as well. Even worse, sometimes it blows up with "out of memory" errors even though I have 2GB and plenty free.

One thing I have found regarding transfers to USB or network drives, zipping the files up helps a lot more than you'd think just from measuring the total size. Transferring a thousand files takes much longer than transferring one even if the total sizes are the same.
 

Kadarin

Lifer
Nov 23, 2001
44,296
16
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Originally posted by: ppdes
I've noticed Vista is much slower at copying large file trees around as well. Even worse, sometimes it blows up with "out of memory" errors even though I have 2GB and plenty free.

One thing I have found regarding transfers to USB or network drives, zipping the files up helps a lot more than you'd think just from measuring the total size. Transferring a thousand files takes much longer than transferring one even if the total sizes are the same.

Slashdot link to Vista out of memory problem.
 

randay

Lifer
May 30, 2006
11,018
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Originally posted by: Spartan Niner
Originally posted by: Phoenix86
Vista causes world hunger.

:(

Vista makes little children cry.

Tears of blood.


OP and anyone else having similiar slowdown problems: How much RAM do you have? try upgrading to at least 2gb, 1 just doesnt cut it.
 

Chadder007

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
7,560
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Try turning off your Antivirus program temporarily. That made mine go much faster, we use Mcafee.
 

Rumpltzer

Diamond Member
Jun 7, 2003
4,815
33
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I've got Vista Home Premium 32 running on a 3GHz dual core with 2GB and SATA drives.
My USB drive is a 4GB Cruiser.

I can transfer one big file (~400MB) to the drive in about a minute. I tried it once where I had about 500MB separated into about 750 files. That took about 40 minutes.

Transferring from the drive to the computer, though, took about a minute.

I never tried the same thing with XP.