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I simply try to copy a few files/folders but Windows 7 calculates the time and the progress bar seems like Knight Rider. When I hit the Cancel button to cancel the operation, it won't be canceled for a long while. If it's USB memory then I simply unplug it. Copy, delete, move or cancel any operation, it randomly takes ages.

This is very annoying and I don't have any clue why Win Vista/7 do that? Is there any better application to replace Explorer for file copy/move/delete operations only?

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    Accurately predicting file transfer speeds is actually extremely complicated and difficult to do accurately without using excessive amounts of computational time to estimate it - think of it like weather forecasting. It's not just that they're lazy and don't want to make it better. Of course, that said, Microsoft's implementation is still pretty bad compared to some other ones...
    – Shinrai
    Aug 30, 2011 at 20:14
  • Only time I see this problem is with a lot more than a "few" files.
    – Moab
    Aug 30, 2011 at 20:23
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    @Shiranni: Calculating the time to copy 200 MB files shouldn't be longer than copying 200 MB files.
    – Nime Cloud
    Aug 30, 2011 at 20:48
  • @Nime Cloud - That just depends on how accurate you want to be - on modern hardware, getting an estimate accurate to within, say, 5% of the actual transfer time potentially DOES take longer than the actual transfer itself takes. (PS - @ notifications don't work unless you spell the user's name correctly.)
    – Shinrai
    Sep 2, 2011 at 14:58

2 Answers 2

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You might want to look at Teracopy. It has a pretty good reputation.

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    I just installed and tried. Thanks a lot. This is very constructive answer, instead of closing the question. I'm not newbie but I wonder why Win 7 acts like a dumb, XP is much better; it starts immediately copying. Happily I heard that Windows 8 will have better/centralized copy/move window. I hope it will be smarter too.
    – Nime Cloud
    Aug 30, 2011 at 20:55
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    Improving our file management basics: copy, move, rename, and delete bit.ly/oGvimM
    – Nime Cloud
    Aug 30, 2011 at 21:01
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    XP actually closes the dialog long before it actually finishes writing to disk. blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/02/04/…
    – surfasb
    Aug 31, 2011 at 4:19
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The delay in canceling is probably due to write caching. (Linux has the same issue.)

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