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Windows Easy Transfer

T

tcsenter

Lifer
I upgraded the hard drive on someone's HP computer but did a clean install of Vista Home Premium rather than use the restore disks or clone their old dysfunctional install. Figured I'd try the Windows Easy Transfer utility for all their personalized settings and user data. I am backing up to a spare SATA hard disk, which I installed internally on an integrated SATA port so that it would be faster than external USB hard disk.

The utility was backing up 90GB of data but I canceled it when it was only ~50% complete after about 75 minutes. There are a bunch of AVI files that are approx. 100MB each, the utility reports the file name being transferred below the progress indicator. It was taking about 30 seconds per AVI file, which works out to a whopping 3.0MB per second! WTF is it doing, a bit-by-bit verification of every file?

I thoroughly defragmented this computer and ran dskchk about three weeks ago, so I know file system fragmentation is not remotely bad enough to explain such poor transfer performance. I tested manually copying a few of these AVI's to the same backup drive in the same configuration. Took about 10 seconds to copy three of them, or roughly 30MB per second.

I might as well copy it all manually. I had nothing but problems whenever I tried to use the File and Settings Transfer Wizard in Windows XP, too.
 
Well, it's not just copying it, it's making a whopping big archive file out of it on-the-fly, right? IIRC you can choose what Easy Transfer should transfer, and then go manual on the videos if you want.
 
I don't know, is that what it does? Does it try to use maximum compression or something? Or is it slow because it works with the entire dataset as one ginormous file (i.e. thus encountering mapping problems on 32-bit)? Either would be stupid. It would take several hours if I were using USB2.0 interface.
 
I haven't used Easy Transfer yet, but I've used the old XP version. In my opinion, if you know how to handle the email files and accounts, it's faster to just transfer the needed files and do the email configuration yourself. At least with the old XP version.
 
Easy Transfer works quite well if you are not using it on a computer that is slow as Christmas anyway. On a high end i7 build-up rig it is much faster than doing the job manually. On a "package" HP midrange it was unuseable. How do people use those things?
 
I use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to transfer files.

FTP is old as Moses, but it works first time, every time - that's why it's still around.

What I do is install an FTP server on each of my machines - and enable when needed.

My favorite (Windows) FTP server software is: Cerberus FTP Server (been using it for years)

http://www.cerberusftp.com/ (Cerberus Home Page)

It works on W2K and above, and it's *free* for personal use, so you don't have anything to lose. 😉
 
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