Multi-Tasking? I don't think so.....

[bobbo123]

I have an AMD Quad Core running Win7/64. Its been my casual observation that I could do more multi-tasking more smoothly years ago with my dual core running Win XP. True or not, the differences between the cpus/software/motherboards/OS's are hard to separate but the over all performance differences all seem rather minor.

I was copying one hard drive to another for backup before playing with some partition software and it occurred to me that I could be backing up another hard drive at the same time. A perfect job for a quad core computer???

So... while Hard Drive A was being copied to Hard Drive B using TeraMove, I was getting about 17 MB/sec transfer rate. Then I set up Hard Drive C to be copied to Hard Drive D using Windows Explorer. Basically, this second copy operation just stalled showing zero transfer rate.

When the first copy job was done, the second copy job spiked up and started copying at about 17mb/sec. The cpu usage showed that through out the process basically two of the cores were being used to about 30% capacity.

Seems to me that both copy jobs should have been doable by two cores operating at 70%? I always thought copy speed was limited by the hard drives and their connections but this shows me its more complicated?

Am I missing anything or does a basic daily used process of copying/moving files NOT take advantage of multi cores?

 

[halomademeapc]

Couple of questions about this. How are the HDDs hooked up? SATA, USB, or something else?

File transferring has never seemed like a CPU-intense process to me. I've been using windows 8 for quite a while, but if it's in the old task manager, can you check what processes are using the msot CPU usage while performing those operations?

 

[Tradesman1]

Very little other than saying - Do it....then it becomes the disk controller running the data from one drive through the DRAM to the other drive, slow drives (platter) can bottleneck, lack of DRAM can bottleneck, etc

 

[halomademeapc]

17MBps is also a very slow transfer speed, expecially considering that I can copy files from a DVD at around 21MBps. I have a Seagate Expansion 1TB that I got for $40 at black friday last year and that can do large file transfers 100MBps over USB3.0, so maybe the problem liesin an old SATA controller. What's your motherboard model number?

Sent from my Xoom running Android 4.3

 

[bobbo123]

Sorry I missed your replies above. My performance still has not improved. I just moved on to other issues like trying to get faster encoding times or selecting a HDTV encoder. Delving into disk controller issues is just way beyond me.

I think it will remain a mystery. I will simply in error or not assume the OS does a crappy job of multi-tasking, OR==I'm just expecting multi-tasking to be more effective than it is, on my system.

 

[Pinhedd]

I have an AMD Quad Core running Win7/64. Its been my casual observation that I could do more multi-tasking more smoothly years ago with my dual core running Win XP. True or not, the differences between the cpus/software/motherboards/OS's are hard to separate but the over all performance differences all seem rather minor.

I was copying one hard drive to another for backup before playing with some partition software and it occurred to me that I could be backing up another hard drive at the same time. A perfect job for a quad core computer???

So... while Hard Drive A was being copied to Hard Drive B using TeraMove, I was getting about 17 MB/sec transfer rate. Then I set up Hard Drive C to be copied to Hard Drive D using Windows Explorer. Basically, this second copy operation just stalled showing zero transfer rate.

When the first copy job was done, the second copy job spiked up and started copying at about 17mb/sec. The cpu usage showed that through out the process basically two of the cores were being used to about 30% capacity.

Seems to me that both copy jobs should have been doable by two cores operating at 70%? I always thought copy speed was limited by the hard drives and their connections but this shows me its more complicated?

Am I missing anything or does a basic daily used process of copying/moving files NOT take advantage of multi cores?

Hi,

Data transfers from peripheral to peripheral, from peripheral to memory, or from memory to peripheral are usually done via the DMA controller rather than the x86 ISA cores. Only a negligible amount of CPU time is used for these processes.

 

[bobbo123]

I have an AMD Quad Core running Win7/64. Its been my casual observation that I could do more multi-tasking more smoothly years ago with my dual core running Win XP. True or not, the differences between the cpus/software/motherboards/OS's are hard to separate but the over all performance differences all seem rather minor.

I was copying one hard drive to another for backup before playing with some partition software and it occurred to me that I could be backing up another hard drive at the same time. A perfect job for a quad core computer???

So... while Hard Drive A was being copied to Hard Drive B using TeraMove, I was getting about 17 MB/sec transfer rate. Then I set up Hard Drive C to be copied to Hard Drive D using Windows Explorer. Basically, this second copy operation just stalled showing zero transfer rate.

When the first copy job was done, the second copy job spiked up and started copying at about 17mb/sec. The cpu usage showed that through out the process basically two of the cores were being used to about 30% capacity.

Seems to me that both copy jobs should have been doable by two cores operating at 70%? I always thought copy speed was limited by the hard drives and their connections but this shows me its more complicated?

Am I missing anything or does a basic daily used process of copying/moving files NOT take advantage of multi cores?

Hi,

Data transfers from peripheral to peripheral, from peripheral to memory, or from memory to peripheral are usually done via the DMA controller rather than the x86 ISA cores. Only a negligible amount of CPU time is used for these processes.

Thanks Pinhedd--that is clear enough. Comes down to WHAT exactly is being multi-tasked.....and I can see it refers to programs that are being done "within" the cpu? No need to correct me if I'm wrong.....and I do think I learned what I needed to know to be "calm" about my system multi-tasking. Thats a good thing. HYPO==If all my HD's were SSD with transfer speeds of say 100MB ---would the given dual transfer take place the same way?==IE--2 HD's would transfer fiels at 100Mbs while the other two sat idle until the first transfer was completed? THat would "make sense" as it is a controller issue as opposed to a speed issue?

How do I get my system specs to show up in my signature area? I don't see a menu option in my personal account, and its not showing up automatically either. Everyone should show their system specs. Helps communication!