Dual Core Will it speed Up file copying ??

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Paul C

Dual Core Will it speed Up file copying ??

Ath the moment if i have 2 things being copied they slow down to a
crawl as usal. Would dual core speed this up or atleast not make it as
bad as it is with a single cpu ???

Or does it it have somthing to do with the Harddrive as well. Ive got
a SATA 150 drive, NCQ i dont think so.

Thanks.

/PS If it does that alone would be a reason to go dual core. Pisses me
off having to only copy one file at a time. Want to do maybe atleast 3
leave it and just do the copy.

Just backing up at the moment and have to moce things arround.

Okies.
 
Paul C said:
Dual Core Will it speed Up file copying ??
Click to expand...

Nope, its limited by the hard drive subsystem or other
stuff like the network capability if its over the lan etc.
Ath the moment if i have 2 things being copied they slow
down to a crawl as usal. Would dual core speed this up
or atleast not make it as bad as it is with a single cpu ???
Click to expand...

Wont make any difference.
Or does it it have somthing to do with the Harddrive as well.
Click to expand...

And the front side bus speed too.
Ive got a SATA 150 drive, NCQ i dont think so.
Click to expand...
If it does that alone would be a reason to go dual core.
Pisses me off having to only copy one file at a time.
Want to do maybe atleast 3 leave it and just do the copy.
Click to expand...

Why do you copy files around so much ?

Thats the best fix, organise things so you dont need to copy files around.
Just backing up at the moment and have to moce things arround.
Click to expand...

If thats all the file copying involves, automate it and schedule
the backup to happen when you arent using the PC.
 
Paul said:
Dual Core Will it speed Up file copying ??

Ath the moment if i have 2 things being copied they slow down to a
crawl as usal. Would dual core speed this up or atleast not make it as
bad as it is with a single cpu ???

Or does it it have somthing to do with the Harddrive as well. Ive got
a SATA 150 drive, NCQ i dont think so.

Thanks.

/PS If it does that alone would be a reason to go dual core. Pisses me
off having to only copy one file at a time. Want to do maybe atleast 3
leave it and just do the copy.

Just backing up at the moment and have to moce things arround.

Okies.
Click to expand...

If it's a major issue with you, get yourself a decent hardware raid card
(Areca, 3Ware, etc) and install RAID 0.

Be sure to have very, very good backups.

My dual core systems run pretty much *everything* quicker than a single
core of similar speed. So long as your OS supports dual processing.

I will never again buy a single CPU system for intensive work.


Odie
 
Previously Paul C said:
Dual Core Will it speed Up file copying ??
Click to expand...
Ath the moment if i have 2 things being copied they slow down to a
crawl as usal. Would dual core speed this up or atleast not make it as
bad as it is with a single cpu ???
Click to expand...

Very unlikely, unless you use software RAID6 in degraded degraded mode
(i.e. 2 drives missing, needs Reed-Solomons decoding, which is CPU
intensive).
Or does it it have somthing to do with the Harddrive as well. Ive got
a SATA 150 drive, NCQ i dont think so.

/PS If it does that alone would be a reason to go dual core. Pisses me
off having to only copy one file at a time. Want to do maybe atleast 3
leave it and just do the copy.
Click to expand...
Just backing up at the moment and have to moce things arround.
Click to expand...
Okies.
Click to expand...

You likely have some other problem. Like too little memory, turned
off DMA or the like. CPU power has very little impact on disk
speed.

Arno
 
No no problem its allways been like this. My last systems do the same.
As soon as i start with a second copy of files the first copy of files
gos from maybe 3 minutes to 45 :)


Its like it cant handle the two copies at once so it spits the dummy.
Was hoping dualcore or Sata 2 with NCQ would help.


Oh well.
 
Of course it will cause disk thrashing. Instead of reading nice smooth data
stream from one file, it will jump back and forth between two files, wasting
time on seeks.
 
Paul C said:
No no problem its allways been like this. My last systems do the same.
As soon as i start with a second copy of files the first copy of files
gos from maybe 3 minutes to 45 :)


Its like it cant handle the two copies at once so it spits the dummy.
Was hoping dualcore or Sata 2 with NCQ would help.
Click to expand...

It sounds to me like you don't have a clear understanding of how a disk
works. It has a head (yes, lurkers, I know this is an oversimplification,
let's try not to confuse the lad too much early on) on a mechanical arm,
which moves over the surface. It takes time for that head to move. If
you're copying a file, it has to move to a position in the file you're
copying, read some data, move to the position in the new file, write the
data, move back, repeat. If you're copying two files then it has to read
some of one file, write some, read some of the other file, write some of
the other destination file, and repeat, with each of those actions
requiring repositioning the head.

If the machine is low on RAM so it is paging, then there's another set of
seeks going on in the interim.

Windows provides tools to determine what is limiting the performance of your
machine in a given operation. For a quick check on CPU and RAM
utilization, right click the taskbar and call up "Task Manager" then click
the "performance" tab. If the CPU utilization is hitting 100% more than
momentarily then a faster processor will help (but first make sure DMA is
turned on on all drives--that's Start/Control Panel/System
Properties/Hardware/Device Manager/IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers/Primary or
Secondary IDE Channel/Properties/Advanced Settings). If the "commit
charge" is more than the amount of RAM in your machine then more RAM will
help. You might also want to read up on "System Monitor" in the Windows
help files--the system monitor tools are more difficult to interpret but
also more comprehensive.
 
Alexander Grigoriev said:
Of course it will cause disk thrashing. Instead of reading nice smooth data
stream from one file, it will jump back and forth between two files, wasting
time on seeks.
Click to expand...

You just wait a little and then you see three babblemouths be put to shame.
 
Alexander said:
Of course it will cause disk thrashing. Instead of reading nice smooth data
stream from one file, it will jump back and forth between two files, wasting
time on seeks.
Click to expand...

Copying a single file (on the same drive) does the same thing, seeking
between reads and writes.

Anyways, PCs these days have enough RAM to buffer several seconds of
write data and could minimize seeking in this situation... but they
don't seem to.
 
Copying a single file (on the same drive) does the same thing, seeking
between reads and writes.
Click to expand...
Anyways, PCs these days have enough RAM to buffer several seconds of
write data and could minimize seeking in this situation... but they
don't seem to.
Click to expand...

Well, maybe a wrong setting? Like "optimize for memory usage" in the
performance settings (assuming it is XP)?

Arno
 
The data are copied to/from memory and disk without transiting through the
processor, with the usual and fastest setting UDMA. The process speed is
almost independent of the performance of any hardware except the hard
drive(s).
 
timeOday said:
Copying a single file (on the same drive) does the same thing, seeking
between reads and writes.

Anyways, PCs these days have enough RAM to buffer several seconds of
write data and could minimize seeking in this situation... but they
don't seem to.
Click to expand...

Could it be because a single command can only transfer 256kB and that
Windows is a multitasking OS. Could it be that the scheduling interval de-
cides how many of those get send before the other process gets control.
 
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