if I have a 50GB transfer as a bunch of big files and a 50GB transfer as lots of very small files, why is the first one faster in Windows?

Question

I’m moving a bunch of files for some drive changes, and I’ve noticed a bunch of times that for 2 equally sized data transfers, the smaller and more number of files the slower it goes. Why does this happen?

In: 3

Answer 1

For the same reason driving 50 miles continuously on a highway is faster than driving 50 miles through a city: there’s constant starting and stopping with smaller files as the computer switches from one to the next and ensures each one is correctly downloaded and indexed.

Modern computers will handle this extremely quickly, but it still adds delays compared to simply downloading one larger file of comparable size.