Eli5: Why does downloading files take so long, but copying and pasting them on the same device takes seconds?
In: Technology
When you’re downloading from a website, you’re limited by many things – the speed of your own internet connection, the physical distance to the server you’re downloading from, and the bandwidth of the server that you’re downloading from. So there’s a lot of possible speed bumps there. You could have the fastest internet connection the universe has ever seen, but it won’t make a difference if you’re downloading from a computer located halfway around the world from you and connected to the internet through a 14.4k dial-up modem.
When you’re transferring files on one system, it has virtually *no* distance to travel and the physical cabling has a very high bandwidth. Hard drives can support 80 – 160 MB/s read/write speeds, SSDs can support over double that. Even with a “gigabit internet connection” you’re looking at a max speed of 125 MB/s on a good day when your router and computer’s modem support speeds like that (you’re not likely to reach that), and that’s before you even start really getting out into the internet to download files.
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