Testing File copy SW, Teracopy very slow.

I have been using (well regarded) Teracopy for a couple of years, but after a recent HDD/SSD upgrade I discovered Teracopy is very slow on big file transfers on fast HDD/SSD.

So decided to test a bunch of file copy software.

Test #1: Big file copy (5.3 GB Video file)

Windows 7 Copy: 30 s
Fast Copy: 30 s
Nice Copy: 40 s
ExtremeCopy: 30 s
Ultracopier: 30 s
Teracopy: 70 s

I downloaded a new version of Teracopy (no difference) I tried difference settings (system cache made it worse). Teracopy just can't keep up with fast drives. It seems to max out around 95 MB/s, while other copiers were delivering near 200 MB/s on my dirves. Deleted from system. I dropped anything slower than Windows Copy for the next test:

Test #2 Game Directory (13 GB ~2500 files)

Windows 7 Copy: 1:45
ExtremeCopy: 1:32
FastCopy: 1:30
Ultracopier: 1:26 *

After the Ultracopier test, I tried to duplicate the tests, but they failed because Ultracopier had locked about a hundred files and made them inaccessible. I tried to uninstall Ultracopier and that failed as well. I manually killed it's service, and manually deleted it's parts, then rebooted. I suggest avoiding this one, but YMMV.

In the end I chose to keep Fastcopy on my system for copying big directories. Faster than windows with many options. But the interface does leave a lot to be desired.

Any others worth testing?

Might want to check out Copy Handler - it's very configurable and I prefer it over the others. Bonus is that it doesn't need an additional shell extension installed.

Thanks. That is the first I heard of that one.

Unfortunately, I can't repeat the same conditions of the above test, because my Seagate HDD flaked out and I replaced it with WD Green which is much slower.

So I repeated a section of Test #2 with my new drive and added Copy Handler:

Windows 7 Copy: 2:38
FastCopy: 2:05
Copy Handler: 2:33

A tiny improvement on Windows copy, but doesn't touch fast copy. Still the one I am keeping.

How about benching Windows again but with the windows search service on disabled mode.

Tried a few more runs with Search Service disabled and no other running applications, not even firefox.

Windows got down to 2:28, Fastcopy stayed around 2:05.

Is the extra seconds worth the hassle over Windows? I suppose if you are moving hundreds of GBs around then it would translate to minutes which may make a difference. The only time I ever need to look for another copy program is when stupid Windows lets me make a file with a name so long that it cannot copy or move it.

I'd just stick with the Windows copier. Doesn't seem worth the hassle to switch for such small differences. The Windows 8 file copy is pretty nice anyways now.

PCMusicGuy said:

Is the extra seconds worth the hassle over Windows?

Click to expand...

What hassle?

A context click while copying?

I liked Teracopy first just for the interface and extra control, but when I found out it was slower than Windows I ditched it.

Now if I am copying a single file, I just drag and drop and use windows copying, but if I am copying directories, I context click and use fastcopy.

I like the the way Fast Copy handles queuing of files. If I'm trying to transfer files from multiple locations using mechanical drives, Windows often just doesn't handle that well.

FastCopy will perform these tasks 1 at a time. That seems to work fastest and most reliably even considering concurrent transfers among unrelated drives - even that tends to be problematic or slow using the Windows File Transfer.

If I want to perform multiple transfers (one time I had a list of about 20 at once) = Fast Copy.

Although I am on Win8 now and I haven't really tested the new file explorer.

I honestly don't know if it is a hassle. I've never really used a copy program. I use keyboard commands for everything so Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V is how I typically accomplish all of my copying needs.

Snowdog said:

I downloaded a new version of Teracopy (no difference) I tried difference settings (system cache made it worse). Teracopy just can't keep up with fast drives. It seems to max out around 95 MB/s, while other copiers were delivering near 200 MB/s on my dirves. Deleted from system. I dropped anything slower than Windows Copy for the next test:

Click to expand...

TeraCopy only displays write speed. While others display Read & Write. So it would display double.

edit: Windows also uses write cache by default. So you can never get an accurate speed.

Dion said:

TeraCopy only displays write speed. While others display Read & Write. So it would display double.

Click to expand...

Note the times. I was timing with an external stopwatch. Teracopy was indeed that slow. It took twice as long to copy files with Teracopy as it did, just using Windows copy.