Then I created a directory structure with paths longer than 500 characters (with Total Commander). In Explorer that took 235 seconds, nearly four minutes.įastCopy finished in 70 seconds, just over a minute. I performed a simple test where I copied a directory with 6,500 small files from D: to C. Sounds too good to be true? I hope it is not! Tests

It can install an Explorer shell extension that places FastCopy in the context menu of files and folders.

It can be used as GUI or command line tool.

FastCopy is free to use and even available in source code.

It does not use the Windows file system cache.

It supports long paths (longer than MAX_PATH, 260 characters).

FastCopy does everything right Explorer does wrong: Enter FastCopyĪ blog post by Darwin Sanoy made me aware of an alternative to Explorer: FastCopy. The result is that the system feels sluggish and the hard disk spins like mad after a large copy operation until all the cached data has been read into RAM again. If large amounts of data are copied, this behavior makes the file system cache grow in size until all RAM is used up and other data (DLLs, for example) are forced out. Every byte is read from disk into that cache in RAM and then written to disk again. Files and directories stored in paths longer than 260 characters (MAX_PATH) are not copied by Explorer.Ī third cause of grief is that Explorer copies files via the Windows file system cache. But still, especially copying many small files takes ages.Īnd there are other problems: Explorer does not handle long paths at all. After the rewrite of the copy routines in Vista had caused much customer dissatisfaction, Microsoft rewrote the copy dialog again for Windows 7. When it comes to copying files, Windows Explorer may probably be called reliable, but fast it is not.

Fastcopy software