Maximum PC

Being a relative noob to Windows 7 (May 2012) I didn't realize how slow file copying or transfer was until I needed it on my dual-boot Win7 32 bit SP1/XP Home SP3 install.

I use DVD+RW to back up my data. When I actually needed to retrieve some of this data from burnt discs, in Win 7 my DVD writers spin very slowly, make all sorts of noises and the file transfer speed from the disc to my Desktop is less than 100KB/sec. When booting into XP Home SP3, the DVD drives spin up fast, and the transfer takes 6 minutes, 5 seconds. 526MB divided by 365 seconds = 1.44MB/sec

My test folder is a 528MB mix of web pages, text files, .jpegs, .pdfs, etc.

In Win7 32-bit, when I move or copy this test folder between drives or between partitions on the same drive, I get transfer speeds of anywhere from 4MB/sec to 8MB/sec. This is absurd!

My chipset drivers are up to date, and DMA is enabled in Device Manager (IDE mode). AHCI mode makes Windows Explorer hang. I tried disabling BITS and Remote Differential Compression, with no change. TeraCopy does not help. There are no SMART warnings. Even the SATA cables are brand new. What am I missing? If I ever need to totally rebuild my system from backups, I'll be here for months. Did MicroShaft really never fix this bug? Google searches show that the most chatter about this was in 2009 and 2010, so I'm assuming that there was a fix that I've overlooked.

Specs:
Athlon II X4 640
4GB DDR3-1333 RAM
ASRock 880 GM-LE mobo
WD 160GB SATA II HD
Seagate 1TB SATA II HD
2~Samsung TSST SH-222AL DVD combo burners

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 7610a2525f

Apparently it's a known OS kernel/code issue.

"Hi all,

I was finally contacted by a Microsoft Research Engineer--this is the title of his position according to what he told me after I inquired from him--late last night, more than twenty-four hours after our scheduled arrangement, regarding the issue. He was very forthcoming and open about the issue, admitting the problem to be an OS kernel/code issue and that it would be addressed by Microsoft as soon as his research team can come up with an operating system patch which would then be made available for installation, publically. He also acknowledged the seriousness of the problems associated with this issue. However, as he described it and because of the complexity of the issue and the solution involved, he was unable to give a timetable before the patch is made available. He said, it might take a week or two, or as long as a month before we hear of any solution."

This was in 2010. We're still waiting.

In my first post, I mention that TeraCopy didn't help at all in my case.
I did install FastCopy
http://ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en
and I at least am able to get copy speeds of around 800KB/sec.
But let's just say that I won't be getting rid of my XP dual-boot anytime soon.

I don't think this is a Windows problem, considering this isn't really a wide spread issue (or at least, to that low of transfer speeds). Your hardware might be fudged on the motherboard end. How do I figure? 1.44MB/s transfer rate for a DVD reported to be spinning at max speed is horrendously slow. 1.44MB/s is a little over 1x speeds. Unless you're sporting a DVD drive from 1995, there's some underlying issue that isn't Windows.

I might want to blame the large number of files as well (# of files usually hurts transfer rates), but I've done 100K file transfers at a reasonable speed before. But just for a sanity check, transfer a large file.

My bad. Skimming too quickly, again!

Here is a win7 slow file copy fix.

I looked at that. If you look closely, that's for network sharing. My troubles are with my optical drives.
Seriously, I get wired network transfers (PC to PC) through my Linksys router at 96mb/sec (12Mb/sec).
I did try anyway, disabling RDC and BITS and SuperFetch, but with no effect. <shrugs>
I appreciate it, though, K. Maybe I'll join the Microsoft Community just to raise a little hell.
Wishes for a happy 2013 to you and yours.
Tom

Large files go through like butter. The main hangup seems to be transferring a $hit-ton of small files. It takes ten minutes for the "Calculating" thing to go through.

I also tried a similar action with my Toshiba Vista laptop. I burned these same 27k files to a DVD+RW with no problem. When trying to read the disc and get the data off it, the lappy hung during "Calculating..." The same disc was readable easily in my main rig with XP, bog-slow with Win 7.

How can my hardware be fudged when XP rips through this in six minutes, and Win 7 takes 91 minutes? I realize that optical drives are terribly slow compared to hard drives... but I have noticed that with XP the drives spin up real fast in a hurry. In Win 7 they poke along and rarely spin up fast except when they're seeking near the end of the DVD.

Well again, 1.44MB/s on a DVD is not even 2x speeds. Something is wrong here.

All I have are the two identical Samsung drives in my bays and don't have any others. Like I say, when I boot into XP, the drives spin up like they're going into orbit.

I'll try the Revo uninstaller. I did some research, and found that according to Device Manager, and digging into AMD's supplied chipset driver package, my AMD SB710-based mobo uses Microsoft's default IDE drivers; AMD only supplies SATA/AHCI drivers.

You should see the number of people who have had this problem with Vista. They claimed SP1 was going to fix it. Um, nope.

I may need to try another drive later when money isn't so tight.

So the only things on my mind right now are:

• The drives are in IDE mode. However, this doesn't cause any real depreciation in performance normally vs. AHCI mode.
• There's a large number of files to be copied. This has always killed transfer speeds, regardless of OS. It's a lot of I/O requests.
• Considering that the DVD drive speed is only on a read, but worked just fine on a write, then this points to either the hard drive or the SATA controller on the motherboard
• Also if the hard drive is fragmented to hell, it's going to have a field day trying to put smaller files around.

Oh, I agree, Latios. Large numbers of files are a killer and really do a job on transfer speeds. But this is ridiculous. It's almost as if the burner can't read the DVD's TOC properly in Win7, and that's causing the buzzing and chattering and no spin-up.
Naturally, I defrag my hard drives before any disc burn operations.
I tried burning just the one folder of 27k files alone onto a DVD+RW. I managed to get transfer rates of ±700KB/sec.
For the fun of it, I ran Nero CD-DVD Speed with the same disc in the same burner. Same hardware, latest drivers for both platforms. Very interesting results, I think:
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Will do later this evening, K. Many thanks.

11:26PM
Welp, I did exactly as posted, and the only change was that Windows 7 hung totally - no mouse or keyboard response at all - for 45-55 seconds during the "Calculating..." step. Data ripping speeds sank in a linear fashion from a high of 550KB/sec one megabyte at a time until it reached 79KB/sec.

I did see something weird running Nero DriveSpeed while ripping the data.
In Win XP, the available DVD read speeds were shown as 4x, 6x, 8x, 12x, and Maximum.
In Win 7, the available DVD read speeds were shown as 4x, 6x, 8x, and Maximum. No 12x.
I thought this was rather odd for a pair of 16x drives...
In both XP and 7, one can change the read speed on the fly, and hear the drive slow down or speed up. Changing to Maximum didn't speed things up at all in either XP or 7.

Another weird thing is that when Windows Explorer was "Calculating" and the DVD drive is seeking, clicking and buzzing, CPU load was 0-1%, System Idle Process was 98-99%, and the hard drive activity light is dark. So where it's doing this actual calculating is anyone's guess. RAM maybe?

At this stage, I'm going to let this thing just ferment until I get a few bucks for a different burner I can slip in my rig maybe in the springtime... and pat myself on the back for not removing XP from my dual-boot menu just yet.

I appreciate the help and insight, guys, very much.

I did some further crude testing, this time with SATA hard drive to SATA hard drive copying.

Paying close attention to the Properties of the test folder is eye-opening.

Size: 526MB (552,483,982 bytes)
Size on disk: 593MB (622, 444,544 bytes)
Contains: 25,854 Files, 1,527 Folders
The difference between the stated sizes shows me there's a LOT of slack space.

Here's what I found, from slowest to fastest:
OS driver used time transfer rate
XP ms atapi.sys 3m01s 2.91MB/sec IDE mode
7 amd_sata.sys 2m52s 3.06MB/sec SATA/AHCI/NCQ mode
7 ms atapi.sys 2m47s 3.15MB/sec IDE mode
7 msahci.sys 2m45s 3.18MB/sec SATA/AHCI/NCQ mode
7 msahci.sys 1m31s 5.78MB/sec SATA/AHCI/NCQ mode, using FastCopy v2.11

and just for comparison, a single 717MB .avi movie file:
7 msahci.sys 0m06s 119.5MB/sec SATA/AHCI/NCQ mode
and a single .iso movie file of 4.35GB:
7 msahci.sys 0m50s 87.0MB/sec SATA/AHCI/NCQ mode

This shows me that while XP faster at getting the data off DVD+RW (6 minutes vs 91minutes), XP is slower than 7 when copying a large number of small files between internal hard drives. This also shows me that either AMD's SATA driver implementation is lousy, the poor reputation of AMD's SB710 Southbridge is well-deserved, or Windows 7 is doing an awful lot of NTFS housekeeping when copying data.

In all my reading, Intel chipsets usually get optical drive read problems fixed with updated chipset drivers (meaning I need to see about updating the drivers on my Intel-based Toshiba laptop), particularly the Matrix drivers. But it's looking more and more likely that probably AMD dropped the ball on the SB710, or their SATA driver, or both.

Just curious, are you running the same anti-virus in both OSes...I am thinking some anti-viruses check data when reading/writing. As an experiment, shut the AV off and then try the transfer.

Nasty

Yup, Avira Free 2013 is on both OSes. Transfer speeds are unchanged whether the AV is enabled or disabled, which I found a bit odd.

A little confused here, did you try burning the files using the "Burn" option in win7, or use Nero? Try just using the "burn" option in win7. Do you get the same result?

Nasty

My usual burn programs are CDBurnerXP or ImgBurn in Win7, and Nero 6 in XP, Nasty. But that's just it. I have no trouble burning a thing (except in Win7, file verification with CDBurnerXP is very slow, but with ImgBurn it's quite fast). My troubles have to do with reading files from optical discs, in Win7.

I'll give the burn option in 7 a try and report back.