Vista - Most efficient way to copy large volume of files

Using .NET 2.0 is it more efficient to copy files to a single folder versus
spreading them across multiple folders.
For instance if we have 100,000 files to be copied,

Do we copy all of them to a single folder called 'All Files'
[or]
Do we spread them out and copy them to multiple folders like
Folder 000 - Copy files from 0 to 1000
Folder 001 - Copy files from 1000 to 2000
Folder 002 - Copy files from 2000 to 2999
..
..
..
..
..
Folder 00x - Copy files from 99000 to 100,000


We find that the time taken to copy a file is not consistent when we do file
copies to a single folder. It varies from 0/1 milliseconds to
400+milliseconds. By changing the architecture to spread them across multiple
folders are we going to be efficient?

Hi,

Regarding on the file copy scenario, are you copying large number of files
between two remote share folders in the same local network environment?

Generally, for large number of file(not very large size) copying between
local folders(or remote folders in local network), you can consider use
multi-threading(simultaneous copy multiple files) to improve performance
instead of copying files one by one. Also, when using multi-threading to
copy files concurently, you need to correctly record the files that are
being copied or already copied in your code.

As for copying to single folder or multiple folders, I think it mostly
depend on whether the folders are separated among different physical disk
drives. As we know, the most cose of file I/O operation is disk
reading/writing. If those folders are one the same physical disk/drive, it
has quite limited concurrent improvement space. Therefore, if possible,
you can consider separate the folders on two or more physical disk/drive so
as to further leverage I/O concurrency.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead


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