Comment Feed for Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy (Media on TechNet Edge)

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

danieln — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:38:57 GMT

Forget copying files over a network I just want to be able to copy files from a CD. I have a two month old laptop running Vista Home Premium and I am trying to copy 130 files (380MB) from a cd. It takes about 15 minutes then I get device IO errors and copys maybe 70 files. I put the CD in my other computer running XP and it copies the files fine in about 5 minutes and that computer was busy compressing 600 MB worth images, playing music and letting me search for and eventually finding this article.

If Vista cannot perform the most basic of operations, read, write and delete it should not be used.

Re: Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

mkleef — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:32:21 GMT

The copy estimation is one of the things people complained a lot about in Vista RTM. Im sure you sure the estimates of thousands of days to complete the file copy in Vista RTM and laughed about it right?? :) My point in that instance was to show that XP doesnt really do much better, especially when in a latent environment.

The end result though showed two things:
1. In a latent network (branch) environment Vista SP1 copied faster
2. It was more accurate in estimating the time to complete than even XP was

APC did exactly what you are asking in file copy comparisons in this article http://apcmag.com/vista_sp1_up_to_86_faster.htm

Re: Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

mkleef — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:24:49 GMT

The goal here was to show it in a branch scenario where latency and contention is involved. This was an area that SMB 1 and the old TCP/IP stack in XP just couldnt keep up. I have done a similar exercise going across a 3G network with latency and recorded each independently copying while VPN'd into my server. The results are much the same.

Re: Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

mkleef — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:21:54 GMT

Its interesting youre saying the file dialog disappears while the HDD light keeps going. Thats correct not only for Vista SP1 but also for XP. In XP the cache manager still flushes data to disk long after the copy dialog disappears. In Vista RTM we dismissed the copy dialog after the last block was written to disk, which while was more accurate, gave the impression that it was much much slower.

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

RolandAkesson — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:26:29 GMT

I tried this:
Computer A 4 years old Dell with Windows XP SP2, Intel 2200 wireless card
Computer B new Dell with Vista and without SP1, Broadcom wireless card.
Computer C new HP with Vista with and without SP1, Broadcom wireless card.
Computer D new Dell with Vista with and without SP1, Intel 3945ABG

I copied 22000 files (18000 relatively small) and folders with 145Mb from the server to the computer one at a time.

I used a wireless AP Netgear WG102 connected to a LAN and a Windows 2003 server where I had the files.

The AP was 25 meters away with 3 walls between the AP and the computers.

Results:
A : 5 minutes
B and C without SP1: 25 minutes!
B and C with SP1: 19 minutes!
D without SP1: 18 minutes
D with SP1: 13 minutes

When I connected the 4 years old Dell with XP2 to 100Mbit LAN the time was: 2min 50s

As you can see: SP1 makes the computers copy files faster but it is a long way to XP with SP2 - I have not tested SP3 yet.

How can I make the Vista computers to go faster? It´s a long way to the speed of XP!

Re: Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

mkleef — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:14:33 GMT

Err - thats not correct. I havent enabled QoS on any of the platforms. Secondly both have the VM integrations loaded too. Thirdly both are using the same NIC to communicate out on and theres no favouritism in the VM network switching protocol for selected OS's.
Take a look at APC's article on XP vs Vista perf. I think youll see they also correlate the results.

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

jbowski — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:34:20 GMT

There is a better reason you had better performance using a Vista virtual machine than an XP VPC. Namely, your host computer is Vista 64.... that means that the NIC you are using for your demo on BOTH virtual machines utilizes the Vista x64 drivers, which I would be willing to bet have a QoS bias towards Vista.

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

Steve Rochford — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:33:37 GMT

I'd agree that title is inaccurate - a better one would be "Put Vista on your network and trash the performance of your XP machines!"

It's clear from the demo that once the Vista machine has finished, the XP one works just fine. Copying an ISO image across my wireless network takes about 4 minutes so Vista has no particular benefit over XP in one-off scenarios.

My experience (even with Vista SP1) is that copying a large tree of files (eg contents of a CD) is massively slower with Vista than XP

Re: Michael Kleef ::: MSFT : Screencast: Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP in network IO

conden — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:38:52 GMT

这是什么东西!!

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

tucum — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:53:14 GMT

"Its interesting that people seem to think that Vista underperforms in every area of the system which is quite an incorrect perception"

When there is smoke.. there is fire...
If a large number of people complains about one problem, there is a (big) chance that there is a problem.
Now Vista developers could assume the problem (and try to study it and fix it) or try to convince people of something they know is not true.
And don't get me wrong, i'm not against windows Vista or anything.
I like it.
It looks better and all.
I use it at work with VS2008, Expression Blend, among others, and its just perfect because i dont do file transfer. But at home i went back to XP months ago specially because of the file transfer problem. Try to transfer new files to your mp3 when you're in a hurry and you'll know what i mean.

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

vIQtor — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:00:44 GMT

This comparison is a bit shady or misleading.

You should not tellthat look on Vista it's 3 minutes, on XP that is 23 minutes.

That is only the estimation for the copy which does not work fine on XP - lots of us know that.
Also the server is also a Vista machine. The real comparioson would contain all variations: XP to XP, XP to Vista, Vista to XP and Vista to Vista.

Guys, please stay more close to the truth not just to the reality - you know what I mean:

More honesty less business.

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

smbunn — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:32:41 GMT

I agree this is inaccuarte. I would appreciate a comment on media files especially. As a user of DVB-T HD TV I am creating media files that are about 4GB per hour of TV recorded. So a typical recorded show with some over-run can be up to 6GB in size. If I try to copy this file to a USB key or another machine it appears DRM kicks in and can take up to 8 minutes to decide if it will even copy the file, then the file copy itself is much slower than XP. I have dicovered that it is quicker to change the file extension to something Vista dose not recognize as a media file, copy it, then change the extension back, but this is hit or miss. Sometimes just clicking on rename starts the whole 8 minute cycle before it will even let me rename. Explorer.exe consumes 100% of a CPU core for the whole time. Everything else on my dual core Intel just stops. Surely this is going to have a significant impact on MCE (fiji) when it tries recording in HD mode?

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

Pedro Lino — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:47:59 GMT

I think that it wasn't such a great idea doing the two file transfers almost simultaneously. Since both virtual machines are running in the same PC, doesn't the first one to run, have priority?

You should do the Vista transfer, time it and then do the Xp transfer, time it.

As mentioned in the previous post, this is only a scenario. I think that disk to disk transfers are more common/frequent on a daily basis so the title as an incorrect generalization...

Just my 2cents

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

TheQuestor — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:07:28 GMT

I so call BS on this.

By default Vista disables Advanced Caching which is tick 1.
I can copy a 100 gigs worth of files from one drive to another in XP and get over 100mb/s the same files in Vista get me 28mb/s if I AM LUCKY.
Moving files to another location on the same partiation is XP is instant, in Vista it is nearly the same as copying [though not always, really hit and miss here]
Don't even get me started on network copying. Sometimes I get 50 mb/s but most of the time I get 6mb/s. The more I use vista the less I like it. And I have been using Vista since 2005 [yes I was an official beta tester] I use it for a couple months, get so ticked off at it, I go back to XP. SP1 beta came and I was like ok sure maybe I can help, not one of my bugs were fixed.
The only difference now is SP1 doesn't always wait until the file is actually done copying to close the copy window [much like XP] which gives the illusion of faster copying, but if you watch your HD light, it still churns for some time after the window closes.
It is FUD like this that makes me have Vista more and more daily.

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

happyandyk — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:01:58 GMT

Occassionally, my Vista SP1 still gives me a Copy problem !
Carried on http://www.winvistaclub.com/

Microsoft Sverige TechNet Blogg : Windows Vista SP1 överträffar Windows XP SP2 i filkopier

System — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:19:56 GMT

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Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

RoyalSchrubber — Wed, 21 May 2008 05:52:15 GMT

Title is inaccurate. Correct one would be 'Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy in certain scenarios' because it's still few orders of magnitude slower in others. In some cases it is actually faster to write on ancient floppy disks in DOS than it is to write on modern USB keys in Vista. Fire IO department, grrr. :S

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=390897

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

Phoenix — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:39:22 GMT

Oh, and kestrel - Keith Combs has a small post on his blog where he talks about disk to disk copies, it can be found here and a update here.

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

Phoenix — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:27:38 GMT

There is a great channel 9 video that talks about the improved TCP/IP stack in Vista/Server2k8 (Longhorn), unfortunately, I spent about 15 minutes searching for it without finding it.

It is important to note that the share you are copying to is on a Server 2008 box, you only touch on it briefly. If I remember correctly from the channel 9 video, Longhorn is required on both ends of the file copy to take full advantage of the new network stack. This is actually a test that I have been wanting to perform, I think it would be interesting to see the speed difference when copying from Longhorn-to-Longhorn, Longhorn-to-XP/2003 and XP/2003-to-XP/2003. I am also curious to see if the file transfer utilities in programs like VNC and PC Anyware will benefit from this. I imagine they will because this all happens at a lower layer, doesn't it?

I think that this has the potential to save great deal of time for companies that do a lot of transferring to remote sites over WAN links. Thanks for the great screencast Michael...

EDIT

The video i was thinking about was actually a edge video, watch it here. This channel9 video talks about it too..

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

corbettkroehler — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:42:23 GMT

I've found that Vista is faster for copying than XP even before SP1 but I'm still upset that the 32-bit version can't recognize the full 4GB of RAM I had installed. I really need it for video editing!

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

mkleef — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:22:37 GMT

It should be able to be streamed in Windows Media player. Do you have that running?

In the case of fragmentation - both images were copied from a freshly copied file. And there was really nothing to speak of on the WinXP image. That said the inherent nature of XP's small IO of 64kb rather than Vista SP1's 1MB IO means there is generally more opportunity generally for fragmentation in XP anyway. So yes XP will be more affected by fragmentation than Vista will for certain - even in a disk to disk copy.

I havent done a file copy test yet from disk to disk though it shouldnt be too hard to replicate that in your own environment and use process monitor to trace that activity using the same flags that I used.

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

kestrel — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:25:48 GMT

Not able to view the video in Opera or IE7. What software do you need to view it?

Anyway, this was a network copy test right? I am also curious about the copy speed from one physical disk to another on the same PC (say, both internal SATA drive) as in backing up la few large files (~4-5 GB) and thousands of smaller files (~20 MB). I wonder if there is a difference between Vista SP1 and XP SP3 in such a scenario.

Also, for sequential I/O such as copying/writing files, fragmentation does makes a big difference. On my home XP box with 4 drives (1 is a backup drive) , I've found it very beneficial to keep the drives defragmented to obtain the best copy speeds as well as overall disk performance. Ofcourse, I have an automatic defragmenter running on it, so I don't have to schedule defrags regularly for 1.5 TB (used to be a PITA) and waste my time. I suspect many have fragmented files and then complain about poor copy speeds in Vista or XP without eliminating that problem.

Re: Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

mkleef — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:41:02 GMT

Starsky - yep both are 32bit and running inside Virtual PC which is running on top of a Lenovo T61p running Vista x64. Both have identical amounts of RAM allocated too which is 512MB. Both communicating through the same wireless card on the Lenovo through bindings in VPC. Tried to get them exact in every area aside from the obvious platform itself.

Re: Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

Starsky — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:13:32 GMT

Mike, are both images the same architecture? (i.e. 32-bit for both, or 64-bit for both).

Michael Kleef ::: MSFT : Screencast: Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP in network IO

System — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:11:42 GMT

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