Memory Problem?

[Mark Smith]

Peter, I have an application that copies alot of 3 to 8 MB files.  
Since it inevitably takes a long time, I tried buffer sizes from 1k  
up to the whole file. The fastest, though not by a huge amount, was  
around 32k. There didn't seem to be any noticable disc thrashing.  
This was from disc to disc,though, not partition to partition.

I'd imagine it also depends on the particular computer and discs.

best,

Mark Smith

On 7 Feb 2007, at 00:05, Peter Reid wrote:

> Hello Mark,
>
> Thanks for the rapid and detailed response.  I'll have a play  
> around with the things you suggest.  However, I did try much  
> smaller chunks initially (250Kb) but found the external drive which  
> is used to hold both partitions (source & destination) went  
> somewhat berserk and the copying was considerably slower!  Given  
> that the typical size of each backup file being copied is about  
> 1.5Gb, 250Kb chunks would take too many cycles.  This is why I  
> increased the chunk size up to 10Mb.
>
> I'll take a look at your AppleScript and shell suggestions for  
> setting the dates.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> Regards,
>
> Peter
>
> On 6 Feb 2007, at 11:53 pm, Mark Schonewille wrote:
>
>> Hello Peter,
>>
>> I think that 10MB is quit a big chunk of data. Have you tried  
>> smaller chunks as well? My experience is that smaller chunks give  
>> a smoother impression, while they don't slow down copying much.