2 part question

[Retribution]

Why is my file move speed from one folder to another 3.2 mb a second, and does having a full hard drive really decrease performance? My Oblivion folder is 33 gigabytes and I'm not even playing it now.

 

Edit: Wtf. My free disk space just went down by 10 gigabytes. I didn't download anything or move anything to my computer. I know that sounds impossible, but take it as you will.

[Vagrant0]

Why is my file move speed from one folder to another 3.2 mb a second, and does having a full hard drive really decrease performance? My Oblivion folder is 33 gigabytes and I'm not even playing it now.

From what I understand, file move speed is based on the hard drives involved as well as your system drive. The speed is lowered to the speed of the slowest involved drive. The files get recorded from their source, held in the cache of the system drive, and moved to the destination. On older drives, the speeds can slow down slightly. Performing other activities that involve drive reads/writes (background processes) can also impact the speed of file moves.

 

I'm probably wrong, but having a full drive decreases performance because there are more areas of the drive that have to be searched to locate files. Having a full drive can also complicate things such as temporary files created/altered when programs are being run, or normal fragmentation. Generally, you should try to maintain atleast 30% of your drive free at all times, but are often better off closer to 50%. A drive which is less full can also last longer since the same areas aren't always being read/written to.

 

3.2 mb a second is actually pretty good if it's a system drive or contains any other files which are being accessed by the computer.

 

*edit*

It took me a good 20 minutes to transfer my oblivion extract folder (3.5gb) from an older storage drive to a new one, and I wasn't performing any other tasks which utilized those drives. Although the new drive was using this setup:

Enclosure

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817392030

Drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148469

 

Both would support a speed higher than 3.2mb a second, even with using the USB connection, but between the older drive and my system, the speed was limited to around 3.0, and would have been lower if I was actually doing anything that ran off those drives.

 

The old drive is a http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822152020 I bought a little over 3 years ago. My system drive is even older...