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I was copying a huge folder ~500 GB from a hard disk to a new location in a different hard disk. Will the files be corrupted if I was multitasking while copying took place?
I was playing a video game and noticed that the game loaded a lot slower, so I was worried that the file in transit might be corrupted. The original folder of 500 GB and the game was installed on the same hard disk and partition but different directory. I have windows 7 64 bit.

What happens when explorer.exe suddenly crashes whilst moving/copying files?
Will the files be corrupted?

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  • Not that silly. Used to be that a CD burned at max transfer rate while doing other things would be a guaranteed drink coaster. Luckily HDs don't suffer from this.
    – Yorik
    Mar 31, 2015 at 21:03

2 Answers 2

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If Explorer crashes, the files might be corrupted, correct (although it's more likely the file simply wouldn't exist or be empty, since the copying is handled by the OS layer rather than Explorer).

Your game ran a lot slower simply due to the fact that both the game and Explorer copying the files would access your hard disk as well as your CPU, RAM, etc. Imagine the hard disk being some warehouse. You can't have an unlimited amount of trucks deliver stuff and take it away at the same time. The more traffic, the more likely there are queues or waiting times. The same applies to most computer components.

Doing something in parallel (i.e. multitasking) should never have any impact on something you do, unless it's really low level (e.g. BIOS flashing) or you'd like to ensure very high and reliable performance measurement/precision (like benchmarking).

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  • "You can't have an unlimited amount of trucks deliver stuff and take it away at the same time. " To clarify: You can have a theoretically unlimited amount of queues, but your number of workers are very finite. The more jobs each worker has the less efficient any one task is performed. Mar 31, 2015 at 20:43
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Due to my Win 8.1-64bit experience with copying a list of files in application "A" over a slow (WebDAV) network connection (with the SHFileOperation function) is, that often other file actions (e.g. showing the File-Open-Dialog in a different applications "B", showing the File-Properties in Explorer, ...) are delayed by Windows till the actual file in application "A" is finished (and it proceeds to the next file in the list). Some parts of the Windows file system seem not(!) to be able to do multi-tasking! The system is doing some tasks sequentially. This should ensure to not getting any file corruption.

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  • "launch folder windows in a separate process" might get round your "Some parts of the Windows file system seem not(!) to be able to do multi-tasking!" issue.
    – DavidPostill
    Apr 12, 2016 at 13:13

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