Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Why does copying a large file cause so much memory activity?

I'm currently copying six large files across a 100MBit/s network from my Windows XP system to a Windows 2003 server. My PC is rather unresponsive and when I look at perfmon, I see that PhysicalDisk and Processor is bouncing around 20% but memory (pages/sec) is at solid maximum.

What is causing this? I thought the memory monitor was a generally indicating how much virtual memory page was being used.

  • How large are the files? Have a look at Slow Large File Copy Issues. This thread discusses it a bit more with some work-arounds and such. I've switched to using RichCopy when copying large files.

    Rob Nicholson : The files were huge video files - about 30GB. Will check out richcopy. Often used robocopy but always on look out for good alternatives.
    From Chris_K

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