Very slow file copy from DVD in Win 7

OvenMaster

OvenMaster

VIP Member
I have used DVD+RW for data backup since 2004 when I first got XP. I burn folder contents to DVD+RW in case the hard drive blows up on me.
I have only used Windows 7 since May 2012, so I admit to being a noob with it compared to XP.

Yesterday I needed to retrieve a 528 MB folder from a DVD+RW with Win 7. I put the disc in the optical drive, and after the disc was recognized, I started to drill down into the folders. It took ten minutes just to sit there and say "Calculating", and 1 hour and 31 minutes to copy the folder to my Desktop, with lots of optical drive grindng, squealing, and chattering. The data was being pulled off the drives at only 70KB/second.

transferw.jpg


Just for laughs, I tried this in a Vista Home Basic SP1 laptop. Windows Explorer hung during "Calculating". I rebooted my main rig into XP Home SP3 and copied the data off the DVD+RW in just 6 minutes, 5 seconds.

I have googled the hell out of this for over a day now, and all the info I see says this was a big deal in 2009 and 2010 when Win 7 first came out, and there was no real resolution to this problem.

I've tried TeraCopy and WinMend. I tried a Microsoft CD/DVD FixIt program but it says there are no problems. I bought new SATA cables and double-checked my BIOS. I tried disabling BITS and Remote Differential Compression with no effect.. network transfers are as fast as my router can manage. FastCopy managed to copy the folder in 11 minutes, but still, if I ever need to restore all my backed-up data from my DVDs, it'll take days.

I'm assuming there's a fix for this but I missed it. I've even been told my 14 month old burners aren't "compatible" with Win 7.

I know this is an old issue but if I'm at the end of my rope. Can anyone help, please?
 
Dont know man. I just reinstalled 7 the other day and copied over about a 1gb worth of stuff and it only took a few minutes. Sure your drive isnt working in PIO mode?
 
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Have you tried creating an image of the disc and seeing how fast it takes? From the chattering and grinding sounds I would assume that for some reason the files are boing copied in a stupid order (from scattered locations which causes a crapload of seeks), but creating an image should just read the bits in the order they're in.
 
How old is the optical drive? Perhaps the read head is dirty or wearing out.

If you have another optical drive plug it in and see if you get the same performance.
 
StrangleHold said:
Dont know man. I just reinstalled 7 the other day and copied over about a 1gb worth of stuff and it only took a few minutes. Sure your drive isnt working in PIO mode?
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Double-checked in Device Manager. All devices are in DMA mode 5 or 6.
hackapelite said:
Have you tried creating an image of the disc and seeing how fast it takes? From the chattering and grinding sounds I would assume that for some reason the files are boing copied in a stupid order (from scattered locations which causes a crapload of seeks), but creating an image should just read the bits in the order they're in.
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Haven't tried this yet, but watching my burning software (CDBurnerXP or ImgBurn) the files are burnt in alphabetical order, and I've defragged the data drive before burning.
cjmarsh81 said:
How old is the optical drive? Perhaps the read head is dirty or wearing out.

If you have another optical drive plug it in and see if you get the same performance.
Click to expand...
Both optical drives are 14 months old (October 2011). The thing is that they work perfectly in XP. Six minutes to extract the data with XP vs 91 minutes with 7.

What seems really strange is that a handful of large files or one large one (4.5GB worth) transfers right away at at least 20MB/second, but 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 tiny files take forever at 70KB/second. It seems Windows Explorer in Win 7 (and Vista too) chokes on a large number of files and takes forever to "calculate" the time and speed. Somehow this adds up to kill transfer speeds.
 
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Haven't tried this yet, but watching my burning software (CDBurnerXP or ImgBurn) the files are burnt in alphabetical order, and I've defragged the data drive before burning.
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Alphabetical order across all the files or individual folders (I'm assuming you have subfolders)? Windows AFAIK copies files folder-by-folder rather than considering the whole lot, which could explain the crappy performance.

What seems really strange is that a handful of large files or one large one (4.5GB worth) transfers right away at at least 20MB/second, but 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 tiny files take forever at 70KB/second. It seems Windows Explorer in Win 7 (and Vista too) chokes on a large number of files and takes forever to "calculate" the time and speed. Somehow this adds up to kill transfer speeds.
Click to expand...
That to me seems an even stronger indicator that all your hardware is fine but for some reason Windows is copying the files in a stupid order - each individual file is stored in one continuous block, so one file is going to be fast to read, but the seek time on optical drives is ridiculously high, killing the performance when reading large numbers of scattered files.

Creating an image and then just extracting that, while a bit roundabout, might actually work faster, provided that the program does read everythinng on the disc in the order they're laid out (which it should).
 
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...formance/e1fea216-e98e-4d0c-9fb1-d97610a2525f



Okay, got it. The problem is a known kernel/OS issue:

Extremely Slow CD/DVD/HD Read/Write/Copy Performance - Microsoft Community

"Hi all,

I was finally contacted by a Microsoft Research Engineer--this is the title of his position according to what he told me after I inquired from him--late last night, more than twenty-four hours after our scheduled arrangement, regarding the issue. He was very forthcoming and open about the issue, admitting the problem to be an OS kernel/code issue and that it would be addressed by Microsoft as soon as his research team can come up with an operating system patch which would then be made available for installation, publically. He also acknowledged the seriousness of the problems associated with this issue. However, as he described it and because of the complexity of the issue and the solution involved, he was unable to give a timetable before the patch is made available. He said, it might take a week or two, or as long as a month before we hear of any solution."

This was in 2010. We're still waiting.
 
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