Why is it faster to copy files from W98->W2k than it is from W2k->W98?

[dl]

In anticipation to deciding which broadband router to get...I've decided to do some benchmarks on my current switch(Intel Inbusiness 8-port).

During this process, I found out that when I copy from W98 to W2k, file transfer is much faster than W2k to W98.

I did this with 2 types of copies: smale files(20 files @ 18.7MB) and 1 large file(30.2MB)

from W98 to W2k, small files took 3 secs, large file took 6 secs (aprox 6.2MB/s or 49.9Mb/s)
from W2k to W98, small files took 7 secs, large file took 12 secs (aprox 2.7MB/s or 21.4Mb/s)

any ideas as to why w2k->w98 copy is slower?

 

[Henry Kuo]

what if i add this line:

For me, copying files from win2k to win98 is way faster than from win98 to win2k...

i am serious, that's the case for me... and i never figure why. By faster I am talking 3 or 4 times...

 

[Anibus]

Are both W98 and W2000 on identical hard drives?

 

[AndyHui]

Win98 uses a sloppy form of copy where it results in fragmented files, but faster copy times....it places bits and pieces of files wherever the free space is closest to where the head is.

Win2K tries to be neater and looks for contiguous sections of free hard drive space in order to minimise fragmentation, even on FAT32 drives. This slows down its copy performance.

Have a look with something like Diskeeper. Copy a large number of files in Win2K...they are all in one spot and not fragment (if you have plenty of free space). Copy the files in Win98 and you will see they are all over the place.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Win98 looks for a certain size segment to copy files to, it's just defaulted to a REALLY small size, so pretty much any blank cluster is enough for Win98 to put a piece of the file.

 

[Killfile]

Ah, I may have a solution. Perhaps it's easier to copy FAT32 files to NTFS than NTFS files to FAT32?

 

[Spearfodder]

Well, if you're in 98 and copying files, you're not copying to an ntfs partition, so I'd say that theory doesn't hold up. 95/98 can't can't read to ntfs nativly...

NT/2k does security attribute checking when it copies, which does slow it down sometimes.

 

[dl]

romin1, I think you've hit something here...I'll try later on same kind of drive. was copying from scsi to ide and back... DOH!

killfile, both are using FAT32...

one more question for all:

why is it faster to perform push copy than pull copy?????

Push = copy from B to A. copy is performed at B, Destination is A
Pull = copy from B to A. Copy is performed at A, Destination is A

why? again from personal experience...OS does not matter...