NTFS file system with large nr of files SLOOOOOOOOOOOW !!!!

Hi there

Copying 2.7 TB of files (music, video) from USB3 ext drive to RAID 0 internal fast HDD on Windows --- nearly 8 hours.

Copying same 2.7 TB also to RAID 0 on identical system though running Linux with XFS file system on both sets of HDD's 2 hrs 45 mns. !!!

Not sure if it's the NTFS system or Windows hardware RAID 0 on internal HDD -- but this is appalling compared with Linux.

On both machines nothing else was running other than the file copy. RAID controller was genuine hardware RAID - both systems showed the RAID 0 target HDD as a 9 TB single drive. Striping parameters identical.

On a small nr of files NTFS was OK but it gets HIDEOUS when copying 1000's of files. !!!

Am I doing anything wrong --fortunately I don't normally have to copy that much data.

Note no file conversions were involved - two identical bits of computer hardware, same make of HDD's. Windows was 100% Windows and Linux 100% linux. Both machines had proper USB 3 ports.

Cheers
jimbo

Since most versions of Linux [I use Linux Mint] can work with NTFS-formatted drives the NTFS formatting shouldn't have been the issue. Unless of course you let Linux change the formatting of the receiving drives. The main thing about using NTFS storage vesus FAT32 is getting around the 4GB limit single-file-size on FAT32.

Berton said:

Since most versions of Linux [I use Linux Mint] can work with NTFS-formatted drives the NTFS formatting shouldn't have been the issue. Unless of course you let Linux change the formatting of the receiving drives. The main thing about using NTFS storage vesus FAT32 is getting around the 4GB limit single-file-size on FAT32.

Hi there

No change of format was done -- test was done on identical hardware - one box was 100% Windows with Windows NTFS for the external HDD, other test done 100% Linux (Centos 7) with XFS file system (except one tiny VFAT partition for /boot - grub2 to boot the OS).

Trying the NTFS file system on Linux gave a slightly faster copy (5 hr 30 min vs 8) but still not as fast as the native XFS system.

Windows with NTFS was definitely by far the slowest - I'm sure for large file systems NTFS has probably passed it's sell by date. Strange though that Linux handles a Windows file system faster than Windows itself does -- even though there's a kernel module FUSE / NTFS-3g needed to handle it. !!!!

Normal Windows works fine --not often people are manipulating huge file and datasets of several TB at least on Home systems - although with music / multi-media that could easily change with really large HDD's.

Thought the test was interesting though to see where Windows starts coming up against its limits. !!

Cheers
jimbo