I like to compress the videos I take to save space in my hard drive. The compressed videos are generated in a separate folder. Then I delete the original larger videos and then move the compressed ones from the destination folder to the original one.
Of course, generating the compressed videos and — correct me if I'm mistaken (I might be — deleting the original ones counts towards the read/write that affects the hdd life cycle.
But what about just moving the files between folders? Sometimes this action is instantaneous, sometimes it takes a few seconds (5 seconds tops usually, depending on how many files I'm moving at once).