vista: moving files

Hi,

I'm using vista. I tried to move a folder about 7 gb in size to another folder by using the 'cut and paste shortcut'. For some reason it says i do not have enough space. Note that i had bout 3 gb of free space left. I thought that it is not actually making a new file rather it should just be transfering the file?

I tried the drag and drop method, but same thing happens.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thx.

pck

 

Yeah with cut and paste it is just moving the files. Are you sure you didn't click "copy and paste"?

 

Thx for replying.

I used control+X for cut and control+v for paste. It works well in XP b4. I tried the drag and drop too. Does it matter if i was moving to my shared public folder?

 

I don't think it matters, but why don't you try right clicking and selecting cut and paste from there to see if it makes a difference.

 

I would guess the issue is that Windows doesn't care where the file is coming from, but only cares if there is enough open space---since the first step of the process is to say--is there enough free space, it is simply answering "no" withouth considering that the file is being moved?

I can say that I don't think cut and paste is a "move," though; rather it is a move through memory. Drive > memory > drive

Since your moving a 7gb file, and don't have 7gb of memory, your computer would need to atleast temporarily use the pagefile during the move--and since you lack enough space for a 7gb page file, the operation is failing.

 

Eh? Oookay? Maybe you should just restart and try again.

 

thx gerry.

i tried moving the folder to non-network-shared folders, it seems to work. ALthough it is taking almost 5 mins compared with XP which is almost instantaneous.

the problem seems to happens with network shared folders ie the designated 'public' folder in vista.

 

pck83....yes, vista is much much slower is handling file transfers....but i don't know why. I had made a thread..but no one agreed!

moving a 2 MB file actually takes 5-10 seconds

 

Free memory (RAM) has no bearing on this type of operation. Windows doesn't "pick up" the data to cut until you paste it somewhere, so RAM wouldn't be an issue here. I think you are on to something with the idea that it's a bug in Vista that is checking the destination available space without considering that it's a move.

pck83: can you move this data around by doing it in chunks smaller than 3GB, or is it 1 big file?

 

orev, smaller chunks does help ...but on average it takes more time than xp..can u shed some light?

 

I think it takes more time on Vista basically because it is doing some calculations to give you an accurate progress indicator. I know that was one of the big things they worked on for Vista, so that could be it, though it might seem stupid. Other rumors are that some DRM process is getting in the way on Vista. Speed can also be affected if you are listening to music at the same time as you are doing the copy.

 

The 3gb data i'm moving consist of multiple files. So I tried moving a 1.2 gb file with 1.8 gb free space. Again it was very slow, and during the transfer the free space dropped to 600 mb but returns to 1.8 after the transfer was done.

For some reason this only happens when i wanna move my files to the public folder for sharing or out of it.

I tried moving files between elsewhere, and it works fine no matter how big the files were.

 

That would seem to indicate memory (and the pagefile) are used in the process...

 

Once again I have to disagree. Even a CS 101 student would not write a copy program that loads all of the data to be copied into RAM before writing it back out to disk. There's no way that's what the problem is.

The much more likely scenario is that there is a bug in the Vista move code, as was mentioned about. It seems to be checking the free space of the destination drive before doing the copy. Because he only has 3GB free on the drive, anything over 3GB will not be moved.

As for why it's only with public folders, my guess is that vista treats them as a separate security zone, and doesn't allow the quick move method because of that... just a guess though.

 

I am not saying it moves the entire file into memory first...I am saying that parts of the file are being cached--otherwise, how do you account for the shrinking available disk space (pagefile must be growing, and the pagefile is simply pages of memory swapped from RAM to the disk)

Every function on a computer requires memory....Cut and paste, playing a song, saving a file. I'm not saying you don't realize that--I am saying that you underestimage what is required to move a 7gb freaking file.

There is more going on here then simply checking for available disk space.

I wonder, however, if this is related to the network copying bug--since it was released, users have complained about copying files across network shares....it has to do with a bug in the Server Message Block Protocol...since this only occurs when you are moving these files into the Public Share folder, but no where else.

There was supposedly a beta hotfix for the network bug--I wonder if applying it here would speed things up?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931770/en-us

The hotfix is not a regular windows update, though it will be in SP1