15 Free File Copy Tools Tested, poor Windows 8 performance


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There is no reason to use third party file copy utilities in windows 8, they've significantly improved the inbuilt file copy functionality so it is no longer lacking in performance/features like it was previously.

Can you pause/resume at a later date or do file verification or resume a failed transfer?

NO.

Hence why it's still greatly lacking in performance and features. If, however, they had some sort of 'plugin' system whereby you could load file copy plugins to enable the extra features and for more to be added - I'd happily agree with you.

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Can you pause/resume at a later date or do file verification or resume a failed transfer?

NO.

Hence why it's still greatly lacking in performance and features. If, however, they had some sort of 'plugin' system whereby you could load file copy plugins to enable the extra features and for more to be added - I'd happily agree with you.

They do. It's called the Windows API. No file copy utilities have had their own disk access systems since DOS.

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So I tried "Fast Copy", and the difference was considerable. I moved a 2.5 gb video file from one hd to another. When I went to checked the progress, expecting maybe 25%, the damn thing was already finished.

True, just one test with one file, but...

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Can you pause/resume at a later date or do file verification or resume a failed transfer?

NO.

Hence why it's still greatly lacking in performance and features. If, however, they had some sort of 'plugin' system whereby you could load file copy plugins to enable the extra features and for more to be added - I'd happily agree with you.

You can pause/resume with windows 8's file copy...

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file transfer has very much impressed me in windows 8.

i plugged an external drive to a usb hub and started the transfer. speed was low so i paused it and plugged the drive directly to the usb port (instead of the hub). i resumed the transfer without any problem with super speed.

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They do. It's called the Windows API. No file copy utilities have had their own disk access systems since DOS.

Windows API is for how data is read from the disk or written to it, you can't just go and make a plugin as I said to allow copying differently and make it part of explorer, you'd have to use hooks and register it and whatnot which in itself is a hack.

You can pause/resume with windows 8's file copy...

I haven't tested it with network connectivity so what happens if you're on an network, start copying from a server, pause and disconnect from the network then reconnect later, can it still be resumed or not?

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yes yes 3rd party file copying software is all well and good but what about file renaming. I want to shave 0.1 seconds off a file rename over what windows explorer can do.

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I upgraded from the RP to RTM of Windows 8 the other day, copying several GBs of ISOs over a gigabit connection is miles faster than Window 7 was...only problem is I can't remember if I'd disabled Windows Defender at the time.

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I haven't tested it with network connectivity so what happens if you're on an network, start copying from a server, pause and disconnect from the network then reconnect later, can it still be resumed or not?

I just tried that out of interest, I expected it to work to be honest... but it didn't. Started copy (copying fine) -> Pause -> Disconnect -> Reconnect -> Unpause... and copy jumps to "99% complete at 800MB/s" then stays there. Attempting to cancel the copy does nothing, if you kill explorer.exe it won't re-open, had to reboot to fix things. (force reboot - using Windows "restart" displayed an endless "restarting..." screen)

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