Solved high ram usage during file transfer

m18xr2

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in window 7 it uses maximum 2gb of ram when transfering big file, say an example a movie size of 8gb. now in windows 8 it seems it uses 6-8GB its as if file is transfered into ram first and then slowly copy into targeted disk. just what is going on here and why microsoft decided to do this? if power goes out then all the files is gone and the entire process is actually slower imho.

is there anyway to disable this? or revert it back to similar what 7 had?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8.1 and server 2012 R2
Try TeraCopy. See how much ram it uses and benchmark the transfers. I've only been on W8 a short time. But it seems like a lot of resources go into making that pop up file transfer graph. Using TeraCopy my file copy is much snappier.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
Haha Miles beat me, yes Teracopy - But shut off any AV programs while using it, if a Virus is detected while a Teracopy is running, it fouls up the copy. But Teracopy can be resumed if you are copying a whole folder to a new area.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro with Media Center/Windows 7
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus § DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2300 MHz (11.5 x 200) 4400+ § Corsair Value Select
    CPU
    AMD 4400+/4200+
    Motherboard
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus/Asus A8M2N-LA (NodusM)
    Memory
    2 GB/3GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce 8400 GS/GeForce 210
    Sound Card
    nVIDIA GT218 - High Definition Audio Controller
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Hitachi 40" LCD HDTV
    Screen Resolution
    "1842 x 1036"
    Hard Drives
    WDC WD50 00AAKS-007AA SCSI Disk Device
    ST1000DL 002-9TT153 SCSI Disk Device
    WDC WD3200AAJB-00J3A0 ATA Device
    WDC WD32 WD-WCAPZ2942630 USB Device
    WD My Book 1140 USB Device
    PSU
    Works 550w
    Case
    MSI "M-Box"
    Cooling
    Water Cooled
    Keyboard
    Dell Keyboard
    Mouse
    Microsoft Intellimouse
    Internet Speed
    Cable Medium Speed
    Browser
    Chrome/IE 10
    Antivirus
    Eset NOD32 6.x/Win Defend
    Other Info
    Recently lost my Windows 8 on my main PC, had to go back to Windows 7.
shut off any AV programs while using it

In my case "it" is the PC. :thumb:
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
Sometimes my AV mis-diagnoses a file as a virus, and when it does that, it deletes the file when it comes up in the Teracopy Queue. I have a gargantuan sized "exceptions" list heh.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro with Media Center/Windows 7
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus § DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2300 MHz (11.5 x 200) 4400+ § Corsair Value Select
    CPU
    AMD 4400+/4200+
    Motherboard
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus/Asus A8M2N-LA (NodusM)
    Memory
    2 GB/3GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce 8400 GS/GeForce 210
    Sound Card
    nVIDIA GT218 - High Definition Audio Controller
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Hitachi 40" LCD HDTV
    Screen Resolution
    "1842 x 1036"
    Hard Drives
    WDC WD50 00AAKS-007AA SCSI Disk Device
    ST1000DL 002-9TT153 SCSI Disk Device
    WDC WD3200AAJB-00J3A0 ATA Device
    WDC WD32 WD-WCAPZ2942630 USB Device
    WD My Book 1140 USB Device
    PSU
    Works 550w
    Case
    MSI "M-Box"
    Cooling
    Water Cooled
    Keyboard
    Dell Keyboard
    Mouse
    Microsoft Intellimouse
    Internet Speed
    Cable Medium Speed
    Browser
    Chrome/IE 10
    Antivirus
    Eset NOD32 6.x/Win Defend
    Other Info
    Recently lost my Windows 8 on my main PC, had to go back to Windows 7.
For me they're alright as scanners. But running a real time shield is like taking a shower with a raincoat on. ;)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
i'll try tera copy thanks. its kinda lame now that I copy 30 gb file and it uses up ALL of my ram.. like the heck.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8.1 and server 2012 R2
is it just me or teracopy is slow with big files? large sequential file seems to be very very slow for some reason..
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8.1 and server 2012 R2
It sounds to me like Windows memory maps the large file during copy. You're likely not going to match it with small buffers. TeraCopy author was around for support either via blog or forum. Also there are other copier applications that may provide better throughput on huge files.

TeraCopy and others too allow you to choose which copy to use during drag and drop. If you want slow/measured copy in the background or full blast resource intensive copy in the foreground. Naturally everyone wants super fast copy using hardly any resources. But realistically there's going to be a trade-off. Try killcopy and some of the others too.

Edit: For NTFS partitions see the fsutil command. You can do some optimizations. But I think they mainly benefit copy of many small files.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
thanks for the help. btw, teracopy doesnt have multi thread copy like richcopy does it? I dont see the options but doesnt mean it wont have it, or does it not have it?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8.1 and server 2012 R2
thanks for the help. btw, teracopy doesnt have multi thread copy like richcopy does it? I dont see the options but doesnt mean it wont have it, or does it not have it?

I would find out from the author or docs. I only use one of these copy utilities for general copy sporadically when I get a Windows with slow Explorer copy... as examples, Vista and W8 before the SP. I don't follow the blogs. There should be comparisons of killcopy, teracopy and others if you search the web. The old v. 1.2 let you size the buffers via .ini file. But I have no idea if that option is ignored on the current version.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
in window 7 it uses maximum 2gb of ram when transfering big file, say an example a movie size of 8gb. now in windows 8 it seems it uses 6-8GB its as if file is transfered into ram first and then slowly copy into targeted disk. just what is going on here and why microsoft decided to do this?
Erm... By "transfering" I assume you mean copying a file. Any copy operation involves RAM in whatever OS ever created. It goes like this : Read data from disk to ram then write data from ram to disk. The more ram used during this process the faster the operation. Why ? Because any access to the disk is much slower than access to RAM. If you copy by small chunks you'll access the disk more often, and it will be slower. Moreover if copying on the same hard drive and your files aren't fragmented, then the more memory you use the less the heads have to move, also leading to a faster copy.

if power goes out then all the files is gone and the entire process is actually slower imho.
If you only copy, then I'm not sure how the power going out matters since windows doesn't natively support resuming an interrupted copy operation. If talking about moving, then it doesn't matter either because windows deletes the original file only once the copy process is done...

is there anyway to disable this? or revert it back to similar what 7 had?
I believe you can use CacheSet, or System Downloads : CacheBooster /// AnalogX to set the cache used during windows copy.
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 (x64)
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
That's what I was wandering about, why would using larger amount of memory slow down transfer of data between disks. That was the main idea for DMA and large disk cache, to speed up that. Try using PIO mode instead of DMA and you'll see what slow means. The only problem I could see is if you are transferring large amount of data while running some memory intensive program and you are short on memory anyway.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home made
    CPU
    AMD Ryzen7 2700x
    Motherboard
    Asus Prime x470 Pro
    Memory
    16GB Kingston 3600
    Graphics Card(s)
    Asus strix 570 OC 4gb
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 960 evo 250GB
    Silicon Power V70 240GB SSD
    WD 1 TB Blue
    WD 2 TB Blue
    Bunch of backup HDDs.
    PSU
    Sharkoon, Silent Storm 660W
    Case
    Raidmax
    Cooling
    CCM Nepton 140xl
    Internet Speed
    40/2 Mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    WD
That's what I was wandering about, why would using larger amount of memory slow down transfer of data between disks. That was the main idea for DMA and large disk cache, to speed up that. Try using PIO mode instead of DMA and you'll see what slow means. The only problem I could see is if you are transferring large amount of data while running some memory intensive program and you are short on memory anyway.

That's the idea of using a configurable copy. So you can copy in the background without sucking up all the resources. I think killcopy has more control than TeraCopy. But I haven't investigated the options in some time.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
I just use "Total Commander", if it starts taking long time just push Backround button.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home made
    CPU
    AMD Ryzen7 2700x
    Motherboard
    Asus Prime x470 Pro
    Memory
    16GB Kingston 3600
    Graphics Card(s)
    Asus strix 570 OC 4gb
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 960 evo 250GB
    Silicon Power V70 240GB SSD
    WD 1 TB Blue
    WD 2 TB Blue
    Bunch of backup HDDs.
    PSU
    Sharkoon, Silent Storm 660W
    Case
    Raidmax
    Cooling
    CCM Nepton 140xl
    Internet Speed
    40/2 Mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    WD
I just use "Total Commander", if it starts taking long time just push Backround button.

That may be a solution if you can convince the person with the issue to adopt the file manager you favor. I like FreeCommander. But it has the same disadvantage they all do. They're not already in ram where Explorer is. Once SSDs are universal that will change or be a moot point at least. :)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
Erm... By "transfering" I assume you mean copying a file. Any copy operation involves RAM in whatever OS ever created. It goes like this : Read data from disk to ram then write data from ram to disk. The more ram used during this process the faster the operation. Why ? Because any access to the disk is much slower than access to RAM. If you copy by small chunks you'll access the disk more often, and it will be slower. Moreover if copying on the same hard drive and your files aren't fragmented, then the more memory you use the less the heads have to move, also leading to a faster copy.

If you only copy, then I'm not sure how the power going out matters since windows doesn't natively support resuming an interrupted copy operation. If talking about moving, then it doesn't matter either because windows deletes the original file only once the copy process is done...

I believe you can use CacheSet, or System Downloads : CacheBooster /// AnalogX to set the cache used during windows copy.

sorry for the late response everyone. thanks for sharing solutions. I am aware of cacheset and cachebooster and now I am getting around to try those, as well as killercopy. I have already tried teracopy and it's very good.

@oneeyed, I just realized my issue is common in server workstation simply because I am running server 2012, although it is similar to windows 8 it is different in many ways and this is one big issue as it is intended for server with over 1TB of ram, and fast raided storage backup. windows 7 and possibly 8 as well have 2gb of cache (windows settings) where as server 2008 and 2012 is set to 1TB somehow. the power outage I mentioned was the file getting written to targeted drive would be corrupted etc.. I liked your explanation on last portion where copying a bunch of tiny files, creating less head movement thus it is faster to have it cached, however does this apply to SSDs? as almost all of my storage devices in my laptop are SSDs, 4TB of SSD space and 2TB of HDD space for backup.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8.1 and server 2012 R2
SSDs work different inside but as far as OS is concerned it's all the same. With SSDs you have to ensure that Trim is working and Garbage Collection is doing it's job otherwise they have to do cleaning bits from cells marked empty on the fly and so slow down considerably. This is even more pronounced if they are in RAID, Trim has problems with some of RAID configurations.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home made
    CPU
    AMD Ryzen7 2700x
    Motherboard
    Asus Prime x470 Pro
    Memory
    16GB Kingston 3600
    Graphics Card(s)
    Asus strix 570 OC 4gb
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 960 evo 250GB
    Silicon Power V70 240GB SSD
    WD 1 TB Blue
    WD 2 TB Blue
    Bunch of backup HDDs.
    PSU
    Sharkoon, Silent Storm 660W
    Case
    Raidmax
    Cooling
    CCM Nepton 140xl
    Internet Speed
    40/2 Mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    WD
so i went and try the cacheset, not working with server operating system it seems as it still use up all of my ram during file transfer. im currently defeated =( with no tricks left except to stick to teracopy (which is great), can't find killercopy anywhere though. again thanks for all the help
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8.1 and server 2012 R2

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
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