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Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9755
Posted: 06:29am 10 Feb 2021
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Following on from my recent thread about the super-slow laptop, the client has agreed to a clean-install on an SSD, and the laptop is like a totally different beast now. Very fast and responsive.
However, I am now in the process of copying all her files from the old HDD, to the new install's SSD with the HDD in an external case(well, just plugged into it) with external power so as not to load up the USB power too much.(laptops can be particularly flaky here)
Go to the users documents folder, and W10 says I need admin privileges to access that - so I give that password(client gave me password for her laptop), W10 is happy at that point, and then begins what ended up taking more then an hour of 100% HDD activity, and not showing me any files or folders, just the constant busy icon circle thing going around and around.
I gave up after 90 mins, cos I thought if Bill ain't gonna acknowledge the files in there by then.....
Boot the laptop from Puppy Linux. Connect HDD to a USB port. Mount all drive partitions, access the one that was the old system partition. Access the user's folder, access My Documents and all the sub-folders. This access was INSTANT and no password was requested. Copy all the files from My Documents for the client, to a USB flash drive inside Linux. Reboot the laptop, removing the Puppy Linux boot USB so the laptop boots into the clean install of W10. Copy all files from the USB flash drive, to My Documents in the W10 install.
Easy, right?
So out of curiosity, WHY THE HELL does W10 sit there for 90 minutes of 100% HDD use when you try to access the user folder if the drive is now external? What exactly is going on, that Bill would take SO LONG to just show you the files and folders?!
As mentioned above, with the aid of a Linux distro, I could access the folders just fine on the same drive, on the same USB-HDD adaptor, and the whole process was done in about 15 mins - albeit with a bit of USB flash-drive swapping and intermediate copying. Linux could see the new W10 install partitions, but I was unwilling to write to them in Linux, as I don't think Linux likes WRITING to NTFS partitions that much, and I certainly did not want to corrupt what I had just setup by trying.
But getting back to W10 - can anyone suggest WHY it takes SO LONG to log onto a users documents folders when an ex system drive is on a USB adaptor - even when you have the admin password for that HDD install you are now trying to copy from?
Stuff like this, drives me nuts with W10. Please note that I used Linux to fix the issue and copy the files without any problems at all, but Windoze won't let me do the same thing.
Bit of a rant post - sorry.... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!
RetroJoe Senior Member Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 290
Posted: 06:54am 10 Feb 2021
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I wish I knew exactly what conditions cause Windoze to start snoozing during large file copies, but 100% share your frustration about this.
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it - the green "lack of progress" bar will suddenly show up and take forever to think about things. This will happen to me in intra -volume copies, local volume to volume copies (e.g. SSD to USB) and network to local transfers. The "best" part is when it reaches what looks like the end of the copy operation... and then sits forever at the 99% completion mark.
FWIW, file copies used to be generally horrid in Vista, improved dramatically in Win7, and seem to have regressed a bit in W10.
The other observation is that "extended attributes" of files (like bit rate for media files) are not stored in NTFS proper, but in some horribly slow secondary storage system. Sorting on these attributes is crazy slow in File Explorer, so possibly these are what trip up large file copy operations.
One day, the whole world will run on Linux (98% of the Cloud already does...). That's not a panacea, but a lot of the proprietary mystery of Windows will be a distant memory! Edited 2021-02-10 16:55 by RetroJoeEnjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P.
Chopperp Guru Joined: 03/01/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1106
Posted: 07:08am 10 Feb 2021
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Hi G
Apart from the W10 frustrations, did you check out the original HDD to see if it did have problems?ChopperP
Chopperp Guru Joined: 03/01/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1106
Posted: 07:08am 10 Feb 2021
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Hi G
Apart from the W10 frustrations, did you check out the original HDD to see if it did have problems?ChopperP
Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769
Posted: 05:10pm 10 Feb 2021
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@Grogster --- ROBOCOPY!!!!!
Paul in NY
Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9755
Posted: 12:47am 11 Feb 2021
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@ RetroJoe: Yes, the green progress bar did exactly that - sat at 99% for about the last 45 mins before I put the entire process out of its misery.
@ Chopperp: No, I think the HDD is fine. Client said the last store she had it serviced in, replaced the hard-drive with a new one only two years ago. I therefore think that what that shop did, was simply clone the old HDD to the new one thinking the old drive was failing - and fair enough. But the problem seemed to be a quite badly corrupted W10 install, so cloning the old HDD to a new HDD, just clones the problem to the new HDD and things stay just as bad as before.
That appears to be the case, as the machine is a ROCKET on the clean install and SSD, compared to the snail it was like on the HDD.
@ Paul_L: Forgot about that utility. I remember you mentioning it before. I must remember that. Still, you should be able to do that inside file explorer without having to involve robocopy, so my question as to why it sits there forever not showing you anything still stands. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!
Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646
Posted: 01:26am 11 Feb 2021
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Heck the guy is busy poisoning the world (did I type that out loud?), buying up all the farmland in the US, plus the biggest private-jet company and trying to shove fake steak down our necks....Cut the guy some slack
Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9755
Posted: 08:35am 11 Feb 2021
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OK, then.......... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!
Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769
Posted: 03:26pm 11 Feb 2021
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@Grogster:
RoboCopy is not really faster than Copy or XCopy. It calls the kernal processes to actually move the bytes. It does optionally limit retries and limits the wait time between retries with the /r: and /w: switches.
In other words it can not copy files which are held open by some other process but it can skip over them selectively based on how you set the many switches.
I think it was written by Kevin Allen and, possibly, Mark Russinovich instead of by some nameless committee. It doesn't act much like the rest of Windoze. Maybe these guys are a little like Geoff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy
In a command window run "ROBOCOPY /? > RC.TXT" and then examine the RC.TXT file to see all the switches.
Paul in NY
Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9755
Posted: 11:58pm 11 Feb 2021
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Thanks Paul. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!
Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me.
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