When copying or moving files (in Windows for this example) it shows you the speed at which the transfer is currently happening. However this is very rarely a constant rate and can vary wildly from second to second. What factors are involved in affecting this speed?
In: Technology
– how many other programs are accessing the disk at the time
– the mechanics of the storage device itself. for example if it’s a hard drive then it may have to rotate the platters to write some of the data and that will introduce delays.
– the size of the files also matters. larger files can be written in contiguous blocks so they tend to be faster to write.
– buffers and caches that are in place. for example you may have a cache in main memory. writing to that is faster but it has limited space. then there’s an on-drive buffer in most drives. when you exceed the space you will face slowdowns.
– the filesystem used will also affect read/write speeds.
Latest Answers