Copy past speed very slow for a large number of tiny files on Windows but not on linux

Posted by Arno2501 on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Arno2501
Published on 2012-12-11T16:26:27Z Indexed on 2012/12/11 17:07 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 282

Filed under:

linux

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Windows

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filesystems

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ntfs

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ext3

I've got this folder which contains 15'000 of tiny images (around 400 bytes each). If I copy past this folder on my laptop (Windows 7, i7 latest gen, superfast ssd) it takes about 30 seconds (yes for 7 megs !!!) the average transfer rate is 400 KBytes / second which is so slow. I mean my usual transfer rate is more like hundreds of MBytes per second !!!

I get the same problem on my servers (Windows 2003, 2008 /r2) and on every Windows box that I could get my hands on.

On the other hand if I do the same on a linux box (debian base, Ext3 FS) (which runs on the same SAN than all the windows servers I've tested) It's nearly instantaneous !!!

I'm pretty sure the size / number of the files may stress such filesystem more than another but such differences !?

Why is that ? Why is it so slow on the windows boxes (more that 30 sec for 7 MB) and so fast on the linux ones (one sec or so) (I mean this was not a hardlink that I've created it was a true copy). Is it a normal behaviour or something unusual ?

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