Windows File Transfer - Waste of time!
By smacksman
@smacksman (6053)
January 8, 2012 7:15am CST
I though I'd use Windows File Transfer program for the first time.
I removed the 80Gb hard drive from my wife's old XP Pro PC, popped it in a usb caddy and connected it to the 'new' Vista PC (well new for her) with a 500Gb drive.
I followed all the instructions, loaded the file transfer program onto the old drive and told it to get on with the transfer. It was sooooo slooooow that by the time I went to bed it was still collecting files from the old drive. So I left it running all night.
I came down this morning and found an error message saying it had run out of disc space - transfer aborted! Grrrr! What a waste of time!
The old drive had about 40Gb of data to move and about 9Gb free space. The new C: drive had about 400+Gb free.
So why does Microsoft write a program to transfer files that needs so much space? It must not be beyond the wit of man to realise that a file transfer program might be needed to move files from a full drive to and empty one.
And why did it take over 3 hours to work out that the program needed more drive space to do the job? I mean, how many milliseconds does it take to work out the size of the files involved? If it had told me in a minute or so that there was not enough space to do the job then I would have moved the files manually as I have always done before.
Is it just me? Have you used the Windows File Transfer program with success?
2 responses
@JenInTN (27514)
• United States
31 Jan 12
Sounds like a huge pain. There should definitely be a warning that lets you know there is not enough space here or there to transfer versus wasting all that time. I think there are some programs that are actually made to cause the consumer issues. That way they will have to buy something else to improve this or that. I have not had to wrestle with File Transfer and from the sound of it, I don't want to...lol.
@smacksman (6053)
•
31 Jan 12
Haha! You're right! Trouble is that files have got bigger and bigger over the years and now it takes for ever to move a hard drive.
@runi1024 (126)
• United States
19 Jan 12
I stopped using the windows file transfer program a while ago. There is a program called teracopy. I suggest googling it and downloading it. The program speeds up your transfers 10 fold. Nothing can make your files magically move faster but at least you can speed them up.
I hope this helps you :)
@smacksman (6053)
•
31 Jan 12
Sorry I missed your reply two weeks back.
Ah! Good. So it wasn't just me! haha
Thanks, I'll have a look at teracopy.
I'm just amazed that these huge software houses write programs with such fundamental errors and do nothing about it. I had a customer who religiously used Hewlett Packard's backup program that came pre-installed on her HP-PC. When she had a problem she tried to use the program to re-install and it didn't work. She called me in and I did some research and found that it didn't work at all for anybody! There was a bug in the software but luckily someone had worked it out. It involved loading the program in a Hex editor and changing a few bytes at a certain address and lo, the program worked!
Now why is HP still shipping the same faulty program ages after they must know by now that it is buggy and doesn't work?
