File Transfer

[extension15]

Greetings..


As the title implies, my PC (XP SP3) for some unknown reason, appears to be rather slow when transferring files from anywhere almost..

(Even from one folder to another on the same drive!!)


Sometimes it can be quite expedient in the exercise, others it stalls and the hard drive rattles away..


My PC advanced settings I believe are correct...


Any ideas would be welcome (Registry has been cleaned/Defrag etc)



:(;\

[Zeespark]

What RAM and Hard drive amounts do you have Kevin?

AndyGuiness Drink

[extension15]

What RAM and Hard drive amounts do you have Kevin?

AndyGuiness Drink



It's a Dell Dimension 3100..


1G of RAM..

Bags of room on the Hard Drive (I store data in external HD's)

There is a network running to the Broadband box.




:|

[Zeespark]

It could be that you have insufficient RAM Kevin. I run an ancient 1.5GB RAM 18, yes 18GB Hard Drive, the problem that you are having are daily living with me and this 'PC' I have.

AndyGuiness Drink

[extension15]

I have 100GB of free space on C drive..


I've tweaked as many things as I can...



I'm just wondering whether it is time to wipe the Hard Drive (completely reinstall)?


:O


(Hope not)

[Zeespark]

There is nothing wrong with the amount of space on your hard drive Kevin. Your RAM is the one you should worry about, it is this memory that your PC runs short term programs, file transfers etc. If you dont have enough, then everything runs slowly.

AndyGuiness Drink

[extension15]

There is nothing wrong with the amount of space on your hard drive Kevin. Your RAM is the one you should worry about, it is this memory that your PC runs short term programs, file transfers etc. If you dont have enough, then everything runs slowly.

AndyGuiness Drink

Andy:

Are you saying that where the files to be transferred exceed the size of the available RAM, it will have to clear this when full (hence the stalling every so often?)?

But what about virtual RAM?



:|:D

[Zeespark]

no its just like engine lubricant, u can never have enough Kevin.

AndyGuiness Drink

[extension15]

no its just like engine lubricant, u can never have enough Kevin.

AndyGuiness Drink



Mmmm..........................



:_|

[extension15]

Andy, while I've been here:



I've just done a 680MB file transfer, it was instant....


the same transfer earlier took 25 seconds...........



:O:O

[Admin]

Is your anti-virus software scanning or updating at the time you are trying to transfer files?

[extension15]

Yes M8...


;\

[Admin]

What's the mischief smiley face for EXT?:|

You realised why it is now slow at certain times, Yes?

;\;\;\

[extension15]

What's the mischief smiley face for EXT?:|

You realised why it is now slow at certain times, Yes?

;\;\;\


Incorrect smiley...



My AVG is automatic and or prompted by me....



Perhaps I should turn off a few things and see if speed improves..


Pray

[Apache]

Incorrect smiley...



My AVG is automatic and or prompted by me....



Perhaps I should turn off a few things and see if speed improves..


Pray

You can change the time of day AVG scans your comp

[Andy™]

just about any antivirus program slows computer down... so i normally only use it when there is a problem...

[SPECIAL LOCATION]

Also if you have the "Automatic updates set ON"
will slow things down whenever the PC decides to go a looking for updates to your Windows or uncle virus.

Setting them to manual update so they only go when you tell them will easy a bit of processor time.


:|

[extension15]

Also if you have the "Automatic updates set ON"
will slow things down whenever the PC decides to go a looking for updates to your Windows or uncle virus.

Setting them to manual update so they only go when you tell them will easy a bit of processor time.


:|



Actually AVG gives itself a time, rather than constantly requesting an update..



Perhaps after so much activity on the PC, it is time to wipe and or replace the HD..


:_|

[SPECIAL LOCATION]

Actually AVG gives itself a time, rather than constantly requesting an update..

Perhaps after so much activity on the PC, it is time to wipe and or replace the HD..

:_|


Or do you need to give that big key a turn on the back.....


keep the clock-work wound up?;\



I know admins is a clock work PC....:p

every so often it stops and looses a bunch of posts!]:)

[Robojin]

Andy:

Are you saying that where the files to be transferred exceed the size of the available RAM, it will have to clear this when full (hence the stalling every so often?)?

But what about virtual RAM?

:|:D

OK things to consider

First lets cover RAM, XP with 1GB should be fine, although I like many have 2GB, the main use of RAM for the first 500MB is to load XP off the hard drive, cause RAM is obviously not limited by mechanical speeds (just the clock rate of the CPU)

Why have more than 512MB, it reduces/stops virtual disc swapping when running multiple applications, for instance email, browser, Word chew up memory, clearly if apps take an age to open it's down to XP taking a memory snap shot and swaping out to a reserved section on the hard disc to load you next app into RAM, I'd not expect transferring files speed to be down to this issue even if you were up in the 950MB RAM usage, unless you were moving very large files of 100MB's+ in size, due the the file buffer design within XP

Areas to look

Firstly did this problem start in the last few days?, if yes, have you installed any apps that are taking excessive CPU clock cycles (e.g. at the cost of the File System), every app gets a share of CPU clock time some get more priority than others dependant on this prioritisation, you can check this in Taskmanger, in typical system System Idle Process would be the highest at 99% even with office type apps running (only games tend to tax modern PC's), if you see svchost.exe running at high number this could possibly suggest the presence of a trojan or virus, or you may see a badly written app hogging CPU cycles effecting your file transfers

Where are you transferring from/to? if you have one physical disc split in to multiple partitions you are still using the same read/write heads, small files can be managed by the drive buffers, and larger by the File System buffering (NTFS is more efficient than FAT32), so moving very large files would drag performance down extra memory may not yield much benefit as the bottleneck is the drive, the cure is a second hard drive, the bottleneck moves elsewhere but might not be noticeable

You may have a 100GB of free space reported, but is it contiguous?, Windows is not particularly good at disc space management, so periodically running a defrag app can improve performance on drives as it reorders disc space into contiguous files that will load a lot faster thereafter

Less likely but may be woth looking at
If you have SATA drives this is not relevant, but older PATA (IDE drives) can use several methods of handshaking to talk to the IDE controller on the motherboard PIO, DMA, UDMA, found in the BIOS settings in that order, the latter yielding the best performance, if your BIOS dropped back to PIO mode I'd expect to see a massive hit on drive performance

Hopefully this reply may throw some light on the problem

There is another thread http://www.talk.electricianforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3451 dealing with hits to system performance but may not be as you have decribed

If you can give me more detail I may be able to narrow this down

PS memory is very cheap at the moment, so you could throw more memory at the problem and see what happens, I'd consider a reformat at this stage as a last resort

[extension15]

..... unless you were moving very large files of 100MB's+ in size, due the the file buffer design within XP

Areas to look

Firstly did this problem start in the last few days?, if yes, have you installed any apps that are taking excessive CPU clock cycles (e.g. at the cost of the File System), every app gets a share of CPU clock time some get more priority than others dependant on this prioritisation, you can check this in Taskmanger, in typical system System Idle Process would be the highest at 99% even with office type apps running (only games tend to tax modern PC's), if you see svchost.exe running at high number this could possibly suggest the presence of a trojan or virus, or you may see a badly written app hogging CPU cycles effecting your file transfers

Where are you transferring from/to? if you have one physical disc split in to multiple partitions you are still using the same read/write heads, small files can be managed by the drive buffers, and larger by the File System buffering (NTFS is more efficient than FAT32), so moving very large files would drag performance down extra memory may not yield much benefit as the bottleneck is the drive, the cure is a second hard drive, the bottleneck moves elsewhere but might not be noticeable

You may have a 100GB of free space reported, but is it contiguous?, Windows is not particularly good at disc space management, so periodically running a defrag app can improve performance on drives as it reorders disc space into contiguous files that will load a lot faster thereafter




OK Robo,


The above quotes from your post are the most relevant..




Defrag is performed on a weekly basis/Window Wash daily.

The files in question are mp3 or FLAC, the latter are converted to mp3 after being decoded.

These files are downloaded (via Torrent) onto the D: partition, if required FLAC/windows audio are converted to mp3 (file sizes 3MB-60MB, up to 1GB in total (or more at times)).

From here they are transferred onto a external HD.

All formats are NTFS.

AVG & Zone Alarms are running all the time.

It does appear that when downloading and performing file conversions that problems occur.

And as you have mentioned, there appears to be a bottle neck occuring.

However yesterday in sheer desperation, I performed a FULL error check (inc auto repair) on the C: Drive..........It appears to have cured the problem (This is the 2nd time I've done this this year).

So is the HD becoming corrupted (occasionally)?

The PC is switched on/off about 32 times a week.

[calltronics]

slow file transfers are due mainly to three things: -
1. Not enough resources in particular RAM memory. 1G on XP is not really enough I always recommend at least 1.5G preferable 2G the price of memory now makes this a no brainer really. Just upgrade it!
2. Too much activity on the computer, such as quick launchers, virus checker and background programs.
Use a cleaner tool such as ccleaner to check this out and remove all the unwanted programs that are starting at startup
3. Last but not least dump AVG and get VIPRE from sunbelt. AVG uses too much of the computers resources when it actively monitors for viruses

Good luck

[extension15]

slow file transfers are due mainly to three things: -
1. Not enough resources in particular RAM memory. 1G on XP is not really enough I always recommend at least 1.5G preferable 2G the price of memory now makes this a no brainer really. Just upgrade it!
2. Too much activity on the computer, such as quick launchers, virus checker and background programs.
Use a cleaner tool such as ccleaner to check this out and remove all the unwanted programs that are starting at startup
3. Last but not least dump AVG and get VIPRE from sunbelt. AVG uses too much of the computers resources when it actively monitors for viruses

Good luck




Thanks, I'll try a few changes (The RAM upgrade will have to wait for the moment)...


:D

[Robojin]

slow file transfers are due mainly to three things: -
1. Not enough resources in particular RAM memory. 1G on XP is not really enough I always recommend at least 1.5G preferable 2G the price of memory now makes this a no brainer really. Just upgrade it!
2. Too much activity on the computer, such as quick launchers, virus checker and background programs.
Use a cleaner tool such as ccleaner to check this out and remove all the unwanted programs that are starting at startup
3. Last but not least dump AVG and get VIPRE from sunbelt. AVG uses too much of the computers resources when it actively monitors for viruses

Good luck

1. I'd agree adding memory is cheap and can effect virtual disc performance if you run very large apps Photo Shop etc (not the typical background tasks loaded at start up, if any applet is resource hogging you can throw memory at XP all day long and it will make little if any difference)

Issues that just suddenly appear such as Disc bottlenecks effecting file transfers are caused by; copying v.large files between portions on the same drive, disc sector errors on source disc, and/or loss of contiguous file order, disc management apps are the way to cure these types of issue

2. Agreed in time XP can get cluttered with these applets and will impact overall performance but unlikely just file/disc I/O. XP with 512k suffers constantly with swapping out to virtual disc, many lose patients when opening mail, word, and flood the OS with commands that will bring the system to a crawl "Hourglass" "Not Responding", but background applets tend to be small 3k-5k is typical, as we all agree 1GB is considered the least amount of memory for XP to run reasonably well

3. This very much depends on how old your PC is, a poorly written applet might work well on 3Ghz multi core CPU's, but if the code is not very tight or efficient it bombs on 2-3 year old PC's, you can use apps like Process Explorer (free from Microsoft) to get a more detailed view of how all apps are utilising the cpu clock cycles

[ianmacd]

However yesterday in sheer desperation, I performed a FULL error check (inc auto repair) on the C: Drive..........It appears to have cured the problem (This is the 2nd time I've done this this year).

I usually have to rebuild my xp machines at least once every 6 months but usually more frequently.

The PC is switched on/off about 32 times a week.

Not surprising. Windows just sux but its a necessary part of life.

Might be worth adding the I/O Reads, Writes and Other colomns on your precesses tab under task manager so you can see if any processes are hitting the drives (would expect the virus scanner to be doing that tbh).

Ian.

[Robojin]

I usually have to rebuild my xp machines at least once every 6 months but usually more frequently.



Not surprising. Windows just sux but its a necessary part of life.

Might be worth adding the I/O Reads, Writes and Other colomns on your precesses tab under task manager so you can see if any processes are hitting the drives (would expect the virus scanner to be doing that tbh).

Ian.

You could also schedule the scanning task to another time of course

As to rebuild I keep a spare drive of the same size to hand for reinstalls, swap over transfer all the hidden files and app data, and keep the old drive to hand for the next time, just in case I miss any files on the rebuild

Another handy tip is to keep the C: partition as free of personal data as possible (some apps will still install stuff on C: :() use a second partition for all installs, data etc, this way if you format C: you will still have all your personal files/data on D:

[bob]

how much catche have u got this is where when u copy something eg: electrical forum it is temperarly stored on the catche sometimes just restarting works but if u have the time and all the software i would reinstall trust me it is the best thing you can do:D

bob