Question Fastest copy

[IBMJunkman]

Which is faster?

1. Xcopy
2. Robocopy
3. Copy-Item (Powershell)

 

[bba-tcg]

I don't know if it's the absolute fastest since I've never timed it, but robocopy is, hands down, a much more robust, useful tool than xcopy. I've never really done anything with the powershell tool.

 

[balloonshark]

I've been using Teracopy free. I usually only use it when moving several files or folder. No idea how it's speed compares to others.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Which is faster?

1. Xcopy
2. Robocopy
3. Copy-Item (Powershell)

Xcopy and Copy-Item may be single threaded. Robocopy by default uses 8 threads to copy 8 files simultaneously (you can increase the thread count up to the number of your physical cores). But obviously the storage medium should be able to handle writing files in parallel. If you are reading from and writing to an SSD, Robocopy may potentially perform the fastest. I would suggest timing the copying of some folder with a large number of variable sized files. Do Robocopy first. Reboot. Then try Xcopy. As soon as the time exceeds 30 seconds more, abort it, reboot and finally test copy-item.

 

[IBMJunkman]

Did a test. Used a powershell script and copied 16gig in 3 directories using robocopy. Then rebooted and ran the same script using copy-item.

Robocopy took 62.747 seconds.
Copy-item took 95.469 seconds.

Answered my question. 😀