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Estimated Transfer Time Is No More In Windows 8
MrSeb writes "Ahh, the Windows Explorer progress dialog. For years it has been struggling to figure out how to calculate how long our copy and delete operations would take, sliding the progress bar back and forth in a seemingly random, haphazard way, the laws of time all but ceasing to exist — five seconds remaining one moment and 13 minutes the next. That's (almost) all going to change, with the arrival of a greatly improved file management experience in Windows 8. Copy, move, delete, rename, and conflict resolution are all being overhauled and it's about time!"
You all knew it was coming ;)
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
1302481501461469 minutes until this feature is completed.
... when it hits a locked / corrupted / moved file, as every version of windows has since year dot??/
That alone would be a vast improvement and make all the file sync tools surplus...
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
It'll be replaced by a dialog box saying, "It's done when it's done"?
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Perhaps they should just buy teracopy
You can replace/overwrite it. Only time you cannot do that is if the software developer has made his program to specifically lock that file, and usually there's a good reason for that.
Finally catching up to ftp and kermit
First, I've never seen the progress bar in a Windows file transfer progress bar slide 'back and forth in a seemingly random, haphazard way'. I've seen progress bars that do that, and but I've never seen a Windows file transfer dialog do that. The estimation can jump around like crazy at times, but the progress bar was always fine (since, I assume, it's simply based on # of files completed). Maybe Windows 98 did that? I don't remember it doing that, but its been a while. Certain XP, Vista & Windows 7 don't.
Second, if you RTFA the estimated transfer time is currently still there; its just downplayed.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
How about replacing an open file?
How about what? You've always been able to replace open files as long as their is no write lock on the file. In fact I just did so with a half dozen files. Apparently I have a magic version of Windows. Oh wait, I don't. And the behavior is no different than any other OS that will not allow you to replace a file that has a write lock on it.
* Drive letters - WTF???
* \ instead of the standard / - leave it to Microsoft when faced with picking a sane choice and and a mind boggling idiotic one...
* Can't boot to a standard desktop from any Windows OS media
* No application bundles
* The Registry - LOL. Why lose just the settings for a single application when you can lose everything! Thanks Microsoft!
Wow, I guess I am out of touch with windows flaws. I quit running windows back at windows 3.1.
Ill stick with Linux until windows is ready for the desktop. ;P
Even if there is a "good" reason to prevent me from replacing/overwriting a file, there's still no "good" reason to prevent me from moving/renaming it.
Then so sad that damn near every program uses them I guess. Too bad windows lacks lsof, is there a decent replacement for that?
"In a Microsoft minute-- oooeeeeooooo, everything can change!"
There's never a good reason for that,
Because you say so? There are plenty of good reasons that a piece of software would want a write lock on a file so that someone else can't replace the file. Synchronization is a prime example. Secondly, exactly what does this have to do with Windows when the same behavior exists on virtually every other OS.
So then it's a badly designed program. You can't really blame Microsoft for that. Locking the file keeps it from beginning destroyed by two or more concurrent writing operations and signals to the other program that it should wait while the operation is finished. Linux also has lock switch for files - do you also blame Linux distros for that, or do you blame the badly designed programs?
Because you say so? There are plenty of good reasons that a piece of software would want a write lock on a file so that someone else can't replace the file.
There are plenty of retarded reasons but I can't think of any good ones; if it's something like a database, then you should only be allowing one process to access it, not allowing multiple programs to randomly write stuff in there.
All I've ever seen file locking achieve is annoying users and fscking up the system when it fails so you have to reboot to clear the stuck locks.
I wish the transfer window created had a pause function, and was actually a queue so that I could queue up more files for the same action (copy/move).
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The real problem with incorrect reporting times is when you have a very large number of 10-100kB files to transfer. Windows spends a very long time starting up the transfer of a new file, and that is where I have seen the greatest slowdown and most inaccurate time estimates.
Windows 7 performs better with smaller files, and provides a transfer rate indicator, but everyone already knows this.
What a weird thing to take out...
Deleting folders with large numbers of files and sub-folders in Windows 7 takes inordinately long, far longer than rd /s. This is partly because it first scans the entire structure to count the files that will be deleted, so it can then try to estimate how long it will take for the delete to complete. The scan takes nearly as long as the delete itself! I hope they fix this in Windows 8.
No.
Why do you want to kill off Windows anyways? Let people use whatever they want. Isn't this what freedom is about? Choice is always good.
So put aside the arrogance that you are the one that knows the best, please?
Then so sad that damn near every program uses them I guess.
Why would it be sad? Do you care nothing about consistency of your data or do you never deal with synchronization? Since plenty of apps for Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, etc also have the exact same behavior I'm still failing to see why this is lumped in as some sort of Windows issue. It's trivially easy to write a C program to do this on any OS. Just open a file with exclusive write access and you won't be able to overwrite the file unless your OS is buggy or stupidly written.
Hey, it worked for disk defragmenter in Vista. I'm sure Pririform agrees.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
There are plenty of retarded reasons but I can't think of any good ones
And that means something why? Because you're the sole arbiter of what is good and what is not? Oh wait, your opinion means jack and shit.
All I've ever seen file locking achieve is annoying users and fscking up the system when it fails so you have to reboot to clear the stuck locks.
You do realize that any time you open a file for writing you are almost always given an exclusive write lock on it, correct? Behavior that pretty much all OSes have had for 30+ years?
How about being able to move or rename an open file while we are at it. These three shortcomings, the fact Windows wouldn't tell you there wasn't enough disk space until it was 30 minutes into the transfer, and the issue in this story are the reason I'm a Mac user.
in this version: the blue screen of death will now be a somber black screen
federal agents need no longer work to violate your fourth amendment, the history vault and facial recognition make sure of that
the windows app store is poised to offer features and products you never thought you needed. no really, please buy them
cloud based roaming profiles put the shine on a classically bad idea
and finally simple system reset means never having to bother with hard copies of the operating system you technically purchased with the PC anyway.
Good people go to bed earlier.
And exactly which OS(es) allows you to rename or move files that have write exclusive locks on them? Because, from what I can see this has, again, nothing to do with Windows.
Or at least *telling* the user that holding down shift key while clicking No accomplishes the same thing as a "No to All" button!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
... it looks like the new dialogs are going to include some useful diagnostic information in detailed view. Wondering why it went from 15 minutes to 2 hours? Oh, that's because the transfer rates dropped 90% around the time that I launched such-and-such a program. Maybe I shouldn't do that next time.
Granted, my biggest criticism is that the copy process grinds to a halt every time Windows Explorer doesn't know what to do. They should either figure out the problem before the copy happens (which they can do in most of the cases where you want to merge folders or have identical file names) so that you don't have a half-botched job; or keep copying the files that can be copied in the background while you're waiting for input from the user on the troublesome cases. If Windows 8 fixes that problem, I'll be gleefully happy because I don't like babysitting copy operations.
This behavior doesn't exist on OS X, nor did it in Mac OS (as far back as I can remember).
As a user, your logic makes no sense to me. There are plenty of good reasons (behind the scenes technical reasons?) why the OS should make it harder for me to accomplish work?
I have four words: "Games and Legacy Apps"
That explains pretty much every windows install I'm personally aware of (including my own)
Either people want to play their games or they have to use/support legacy apps for a business that it doesn't want to take the time, expense and risk of replacing.
Really? It's a short coming of Windows yet I created a txt file, opened it in Notepad and Notepad++ and I was able to both rename and move it. I guess I once again have a magical version of Windows.
So to test, I was able to do this in Windows. Created a txt file, opened it twice, once in Notepad another time in Notepad++, was able to rename it and move it. So what's your issue?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653
Process Explorer can list file handles.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
You can't play games and record the video on linux.
Well yeah, you can, maybe. Compared to fraps it is a pita.
I play games on my windows box and occationally I want to record something for youtube. It's just not viable to do that in linux, even if you could run the game in Wine. I switch to linux for editing. Kdenlive is very nice for that.
Why does everything have to be an "experience" now? I'm not really looking for an experience from my workstation; what I have are a list of tasks that need to be completed. When I go on vacation is when I look for an experience. Why don't they concentrate on helping me get actual work done?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Not with a proper text editor. .filename.swp that vim uses?
Never seen the
This behavior doesn't exist on OS X, nor did it in Mac OS (as far back as I can remember).
Really? Because I wrote a trivial C program and ran it on OS X where I opened a file with an exclusive write lock and the file couldn't be replaced.
As a user, your logic makes no sense to me. There are plenty of good reasons (behind the scenes technical reasons?) why the OS should make it harder for me to accomplish work?
Why does it not make sense? Do you as a user not want consistent data? Do you never work in an environment where files are shared and you don't want others overwriting your changes? These are not uncommon situations in the least bit. And yet, to handle all these you *gasp* have to put exclusive write locks on files. Apps for both OS X and Linux do this as well. This has absolutely NOTHING to do with anything that Windows does.
Not an issue for me, I use Directory Opus.
But...but...it has to be a Windows problem despite the fact that what they complain about can also happen in Linux and Unix and Mac OS X. Hell even the complaints about not being able to rename or move open files in Windows is wrong. These people basically have no clue what they are talking about.
Simple there is too much software that runs only on windows that people need and or want. For the enterprise VB was a brillant lock in. It because fast and easy to write applications that ran on Windows and no where else.
People talk about Office but the real lock in was VB and now it looks like C# is trying to take it's place. You can make an effort to make it portable or just go the easy way and make it only run on Windows.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
And that means something why? Because you're the sole arbiter of what is good and what is not? Oh wait, your opinion means jack and shit.
So, give us a good reason why a program should be locking a file so no other program can access it. And by good reason, it has to be something that isn't better solved by having one process arbitrating access to that file (e.g. dumb database vs some kind of SQL server).
You do realize that any time you open a file for writing you are almost always given an exclusive write lock on it, correct? Behavior that pretty much all OSes have had for 30+ years?
No wonder you think file locking is a good thing if you know so little about how file accesses work. I don't remember even Windows being that retarded, and the numerous Unix variants certainly weren't.
Because it means you are closing apps to replace files. A silly thing to do. I can rm rm, lets see windows do that.
Thank you.
Does this have a CLI?
I would hate to have to watch filenames blink in and out of the list in a gui.
Linux also has lock switch for files - do you also blame Linux distros for that, or do you blame the badly designed programs?
The difference is that almost every Windows program locks files even though there's no reason to do so, whereas almost no Unix programs lock files because there's no reason to do so. If you have two programs writing to the same file simultaneously, you're probably doing something wrong.
It's so hard for me to believe that so many people still use Windows. As a Ubuntu Desktop user and administrator of a small business network, I've been patiently waiting since 1999 for enough people to just ditch windows all together so that we could all move on to better times. Everyone I know who has tried Linux in the past few years hasn't gone back to Windows, and were all amazed that the computer 'Just Worked'. People are so used to struggling with Windows issues that they don't expect using a computer to be easy and it really doesn't have to be that way.
So perhaps this is a bit off topic, but every time an article comes out touting some new enhancement of the Microsoft Windows Operating system, I just feel compelled to say "Who fucking cares?" and "Why does anyone even bother with this Operating System designed with the main purpose being to lock up your computer spending dollar into Microsoft?" Don't we all know better already?
Please people, get over MS Windows already, let it die.
Everyone you know?
Ok, well I don't know you but, hey, we're all friends on here so I kinda feel thatI know you ;-)
I /did/ use Linux on my primary laptop for a while (Ubuntu and Fedora, if you're interested) and while I like parts of it, other parts of it stank. Badly. Multi-monitor support was, frankly, embarrassing and suspend/resume was patchy at best. It certainly wasn't more reliable as I found it more likely to "lock up" in a given situation than Windows 7, which TBH, is very usable and a good workhorse.
Don't get me wrong, I use Linux as much as the next one....in the data centre...but it's /still/ got a long way to go on the desktop. Personally, I've got real work to do...and I'm sticking with Windows for now.
Daern
ps. Oh, I do love XBMC Live for the tellybox though :-)
Try supporting software that only runs on Windows and then talk to me... Sure Linux is great, Ubuntu and Centos are awesome, I support those also. But the fact remains that most of the software that I've supported down through the years(accounting, security, scientific, point of sale, crm, etc;...) in an administrative function ONLY RUNS ON WINDOWS. If anything, I would imagine that your "wide-world-of-linux" worldview is an anomaly, and doesn't represent the majority of admins out there, who support both Windows and Linux. The only that turns my stomach more than a Linux Snob is an Apple Snob.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
You didn't test anything, because Notepad doesn't lock files when it opens them. Try renaming/moving a file while it's still being downloaded, or a movie while it's being played.
Why not just go back to the file copy from XP ?
It worked great until somone had the bright idea of rewriting it for the sake of it in Vista. It might say Windows 7 when it starts up, but it's still got big chunks of Vista underneath.
What's wrong with them. I've been doing some mega transfers on my Macs lately and those progress bars are right on, even for transfers that took two days to complete. When it says an hour left, it pretty damn well means it. By-hand calculations based on file size and sustained transfer speeds match their's straight on. From the behavior I think Macs sum up the total size of all files and divides by the current transfer rate (or recent average). If there's a dip (router gets slow) the time adjusts accordingly. In Windows I see it jump around dramatically as files move. I THINK what it's doing is looking at average-time-to-transfer-a-file. If you have a mxi of large and small files (I move huge data file along-side the tiny scripts that generated them) and I think it thinks that the 10 minutes it took to move a data file means the next 5 KB text file is going to take the same amoutn of time, but then it starts that file and thinks, "Oh no, this is going fast now, shorten the time." I think they're changes are probably a lot of smoke and mirrors
I never said it was exclusive to Windows.
I tried installing Ubuntu on a home server, and eventually gave up on it after spending 40+ hours dicking around on the command line to make what should have been simple changes in a GUI. And the process that couldn't be stopped because it wasn't running, but couldn't be started because it was running... yeah, that one bothered me too.
Yeah, I guess Ubuntu "just works" if all you ever do is browse the internet, send email, and write the occasional text document. But it utterly starts to fail if you need to do anything more. That's not to say Windows is great--it certainly isn't--but at least it works. That may change, though, if they continue with the apparently industry-wide trend of removing all but the grandma-level features from software.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Funny. I use Windows, and it just works. I'm going to guess that the problem is the users you've been working with, not the OS.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Like the way I can't rename a PDF file if it is open in Adobe Reader? Or rename an MS Word file? Yet if I attempt the same thing in OS X or Linux it's just fine to rename them while the file is open and the program just picks up the changed name?
It's not Microsoft's fault, but due to developers who write software differently for Windows? Yet somehow developers can manage to do it for other platforms. I guess Windows isn't an important enough market for software developers to do it right, or they think that users would never have a reason to rename a file while it is open, if working in Windows.
No, I think most people realize some types of basic file operations in Windows are pretty limited compared to other operating systems/file systems, and it isn't the developer's fault.
Start a Terminal window.
Type in:
$ cat > ~/SomeTextFile.txt
then type a few lines of junk into the terminal afterwards. leave the Terminal window open.
Now go into your home directory and open the file you've created in your favourite text editor. Try making some changes to the file and then saving it.
Didn't work, did it? See, OSX has always had write locking semantics, and earlier MacOSes did too. What was actually going on, is you were just using apps which were sanely designed, which means they only open the file for reading and writing during 'Open' and 'Save' operations, and the rest of the time they leave the file untouched.
When you think you "have a file open", that's not really the case. You opened the file in order to copy it into RAM, and then closed it again once its contents were displayed in your application window. All subsequent changes to the document onscreen are being made to the document in RAM, not on the filesystem, up until you click "save" and commit it back to the filesystem.
Just like in Windows. And *nix. And OS/2. This is pretty much the standard behaviour of every multitasking operating system ever made.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
I thought it was just me.
I use a Mac, and it isn't much better. The most hated words on my Mac. "Preparing to Copy." Gets me thinking of:
Dark Helmet: "Your Preparing, your always preparing, just Go!"
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Yes, because he says so.
Whose goddamned machine is it exactly?
Process Explorer allows you to search by resource and close an open handle forcibly. Won't work against a system process but should work for anything else.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The MC folks should donate their progress bar code to MS. It's by far the most informative and accurate I've ever seen.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
I'm still mad about the (basically) neutered search capability for desktop/LAN files in Windows 7.
What used to be a consistent
"right-click, choose 'Search', enter 'filename' OR 'phrase in file', tick off search parameters, optionally expand and enter detailed parameters, hit 'Search' button->Results"
workflow has been 'simplified' to
"enter your search string in this little text window and we'll search inside every goddamn file in this directory/subdirectory (oh, and across teh internets and rifling through your emails too, if you want!) for that search term, no matter how long it takes -> wait for freaking ever -> more results than you ever needed, or no results if it's a system file, not in an indexed location or Windows simply doesn't like it for some reason. Oh, you want additional search parameters? Good luck finding any besides filesize and date modified!"
You used to be able to re-enable old-style search on Vista (somewhat), but I guess they thought it was too much of a dinosaur (or too useful, perhaps) to include in Win 7. Bah. Get off my lawn!
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Exactly this. Imagine if Windows allowed overwriting files like that. Especially when programs are explicitly requesting write lock on the file. So many people would be complaining about important documents that got destroyed and crashing applications.
Speaking as someone who uses Linux every day, I must ask: why in the world do you consider that a *good* thing to be able to do?
If I've got a log file which is opened by one program in Append mode, and I rename/move it, what should happen? Should the program keep appending logs to the file in its new name/location until it closes and reopens the file, or should it start a new file with the original's name/path? Choose carefully - either answer will create unpredictable or incorrect behaviour in some programs depending on the details of the file and how it's being used.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Linux has only rudimentary mandatory lock support. Approximately no one uses it, and you need to add a mount option to the file system to enable it.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Slight correction, it doesn't even leave the file open. It just opens it, reads the contents, and then closes it. Of course you can rename/move the file. But drop a 1/2 GB file into Notepad and then try renaming it while Notepad is still trying to read it. You can't.
I have a Linux laptop that I keep around (running Ubuntu 10.something) and I have not been convinced to leave Windows. I have had a total of one blue screen in the last 5 years and that was on a Windows machine running in a VM...I think something was unhappy when the host machine went to sleep. Generally I have zero issues with Windows as much as the Slashdot crowd wants to believe otherwise. I consider myself a geek and would love to find something out there worth leaving windows for but nothing has shown itself to be better in any noticeable way and have mostly involved notable downsides. I've had FAR more problems getting my Ubuntu machine working right though it has been significantly better than my previous experiences with Linux.
Try renaming/moving a file while it's still being downloaded, or a movie while it's being played.
Okay, I tried it both on Windows and Ubuntu. Behavior was the exact same. It couldn't be moved or renamed since Firefox hold a lock on the file. So, once again. Why is this Windows fault?
Everyone I know who has tried Linux in the past few years hasn't gone back to Windows, and were all amazed that the computer 'Just Worked'.
Hi, I'm R. Bemrose. Pleased to meet you.
I've tried several times to switch my desktop PC to Linux, and every time (across, what, 4 distros now? Redhat 9, Debian Sarge, Ubuntu 8.10, and Ubuntu 10.04) there's been some issue that caused me to move back to the platform that really does "just work" even if it does require me to use the CD/DVDs given to me by the hardware manufacturers for my computer's parts.
It hasn't been the same reason every time either. As I recall, one wouldn't start XWindows at all if I had any resolution larger than 640x480, one didn't properly support my network card, one didn't support my sound device, one decided to hose Wine on me (which I was going to use to run certain games) in addition to having weirdness with the sound device (it would randomly stop working).
Having said that, I've used Debian for servers for years, and recently set up a Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit server.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I gave ubuntu a shot about a year ago. It was on relatively old hardware... 1.8Ghz Athlon, GeForce 6600, etc.
It did not work. In fact, it was an absolute disaster. I hand to manually edit my grub file to even get it to boot properly, and then there was no proper drivers for my video card so I ended up installing 3 different ones before I found one that would work, nor did I even bother trying to get the video out on my vid card to work. Software was also abysmal. There's nothing comparable to Photoshop for the platform (don't even say a word about GIMP, it's not in the same league at all). I tend to listen to a lot of music while I work, so I went through several different music players, most of which was atrocious. Eventually I came across Banshee which was decent but had some absolutely horrible UI design.
Last spring I built myself a new computer. I didn't even hesitate to purchase a copy of Windows 7 to go with it. And guess what? When I installed Windows 7 it 'Just Worked'. Linux only works for servers or people who have simple computing needs that could just as easily be accommodated by using a tablet. Don't get me wrong, I would absolutely LOVE to ditch Windows just because I prefer open source (especially for something as fundamental as an OS) but it's just not there yet. It does not meet my needs. It's unfortunate, but Windows still has a use and I don't see that changing any time soon.
"Operating System designed with the main purpose being to lock up your computer"
I think you could have ended your sentence right there.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I administer ~10 Ubuntu Server systems, so I'm no sop. My wife uses her laptop for basic stuff: facebook, email, type a paper, and media. She's not amazing with computers, but she's better than most. I installed Ubuntu 11.04 and set it to the classic Gnome. I even put MS Office 07 running under Wine because the docx support is still not quite there in libreoffice. She loves the idea of moving to Ubuntu, but after about 2 weeks, she insisted to be put back to Windows.
Chrome wouldn't run many of her Facebook games. It worked fine in Firefox and works fine in Chrome on Windows.
Full screen flash videos drop frames left and right, they played fine in Windows.
The final thing that pushed her over was the torrent software. Transmission sucks compared to uTorrent and Vuze is a joke (I wish Azureus was still developed.) When you visit the uTorrent site in a Linux browser, it tries to get you to install some "command line only" version of their software...and it's not even clear about that. I know it will run in Wine, but you have to dig to find the Windows version when you visit their site on Linux. She was frustrated because she had to come to me to install new software that wasn't in a repository.
That's a nice technical answer and all, but here's the reality of what the user experiences:
Scenario 1: Rename an open File
Windows: open MS Word, create a doc, save it as my page.doc. Then, with that file still open, because like 99% of all users, you are working with a document so therefore it is open, go to the desktop and rename the file. It tells you the document is in use and cannot be renamed.
Mac: do all that same stuff, except when you get to the "rename" part, it renames the file. The open copy in Word updates the file name.
Scenario 2: Move an open File
Windows: Open MS Word, create a doc, save it as my_page.doc. Continue working on the doc then get a email from your boss telling you to stick the doc in a different directory. You go to the file in Windows and cut and paste it to the new location, only to be greeted by the message that the file is in use and cannot be moved. Go back to Word, choose "save as" and save the document to a new place, then go to the old place and delete the dupe.
Mac: Go to the finder and move the open Word doc wherever you want. All the relative file paths are updated. OR, use "save as" in Word and deal with duplicate copies (but then again Lion introduces an entirely new versioning system, and there is no longer "save as", but that's another conversation)
So lock file, no lock file, whatever. You cannot debate that OS X handles open files differently (more elegantly) than Windows. I've never had to install an "unlocker" app in OS X.
Those programs don't keep the file open.
What the application does, from a coder's point of view, is open a file, reads a file into a buffer, and closes a file. It then displays the buffer. The file is no longer open.
A lot of applications will open the file, read it and keep it open. Sometimes they do this for a perfectly valid reason bit a lot of the time it's just bad programming.
If only Apple would fix the disgrace that is Finder, the two leading commercial operating systems might be almost usable.
-- Linux user #369862
And exactly which OS(es) allows you to rename or move files that have write exclusive locks on them? Because, from what I can see this has, again, nothing to do with Windows.
BSD, Linux and MacOS allow you to do that, and even delete or overwrite the file while it's still locked without causing problems. Moving, deleting or renaming a file affects only a hardlink to the file and not the file itself; and overwriting a file is actually just deleting a hardlink and writing to a completely new file.
When the problem is Word, I think we can blame them.
I use a little utility called 'unlocker'. Whenever an operation is performed on an open file, it lets you force it through. I use it to copy music/videos out of my firefox cache. At least with flash, they're locked while playing, and deleted when done.
The time remaining is not gone. See it in the actual screenshots for the detailed view.
Could we link to the actual source please? Building Windows 8 blog
Windows 7 (and I believe Vista too) won't let you move/copy to a destination if the destination doesn't have enough space at the time the copy starts
You don't estimate based on the exact current transfer speed (which is highly variable). You use a sliding average over, say 10-30 seconds, to get a reasonable estimate of current average speed, and then estimate based on that.
(Incidentally, you also don't just use the current number of bytes transferred vs. the total number of bytes. Estimates based on this measure don't adapt well to fluctuating speed.)
I've been patiently waiting since 1999
You're impressions of Windows are outdated. It has been a stable OS since XP was released.
For a great many reasons the biggest one being that I could replace rm while using rm. Which means I don't need to reboot to do that.
Some people like to have complete access to their filesystem and not be hindered by their OS babysitting them or worse replacing the missing file later without their authorization. On atleast two occasions I've had to overwrite cp and mv to fix an issue with compiling. Had I been dealing with a microsoft OS I would have needed to jump through a ton of hoops to do something similar if not boot to entirely different OS and do it from there.
You can't take the sky from me.
Process Explorer allows you to search by resource and close an open handle forcibly. Won't work against a system process but should work for anything else.
Forcibly closing file handles behind a program's back is almost always a really bad idea. The program holding the handle has no reason to expect that the handle has been closed and will continue to use it. Sometimes this just results in an invalid handle error, but if the handle has been re-issued it might mean that program A unintentionally closes (or writes to!) program B's handle (since the internal handle identifiers are re-used by the kernel).
I'm pretty sure Raymond Chen (of the OldNewThing blog) wrote about this, but I can't find the article now.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Your...
Windows sucks in this regard...period.
No, actually it has nothing to do with Windows at all. The part you glossed over points out that I wrote a simple trivial program in C that opened a file and put a lock on it. It was not over a network or anything else, yet it was unable to be renamed, moved or replaced. There are plenty of other OS X and Linux apps that I have used that have exactly the same behavior with files they are working on. Basically this has jack and shit to do with Windows despite what you and h4rr4r will continue to claim.
It's not Windows' fault; it's equally stupid on all OSes.
Huh? I ran the exact same program in Ubuntu and the same behavior happened. The file I opened was not able to be renamed, replaced or moved until I unlocked it. What the hell are you talking about?
And here I thought the problem is that it's a samzenpus summary and as such trollific and inaccurate by definition.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It's so hard for me to believe that so many people still use Windows.
So there's something wrong with your belief system.
Everyone I know who has tried Linux in the past few years hasn't gone back to Windows, and were all amazed that the computer 'Just Worked'.
So clearly you're atypical. It looked like Linux was going to make some progress when it seemed to be the right thing for manufacturers to ship on low-power and cheap netbooks. But it turned out that was a mistake as they had such a large return rate. People wanted Windows.
Windows market share is very slowly erroding, but mostly towards OS X, not desktop Linux.
There's no sign of Linux ever being ready for ordinary desktop users.
It depends if you use the inode or the path to locate the file. Both are totally justifiable, and won't create unpredictable or incorrect behavior under a descent operating system.
I don't know what bullshit is Ubuntu or Gnome doing, but I can move and delete temporary download files in my Debian box. Have you used 'rm' or the graphical file manager?
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Because of course it's better when you can't.
Moved or renamed, it's the same file. I don't see what's the problem.
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The OS should seamlessly allow it to continue appending logs to the file in its new name/location, and let the program decide whether to create a fresh file if it detects that the file it had open has been moved/renamed.
The ten year old arguments still apply because, well, people are still using software that old. We have clients running IE6 on Windows 2K and XP (Federal gvt, in case you're wondering). Two years ago we still saw NT4 on occasion.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Kind of! Process Explorer is a SysInternals program. SysInternals is a bunch of power user programs for Windows. While Process Explorer is GUI only you can instead use the command line alternative Handle.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896655
You seem to be about the only responder in this thread who actually understands how files work.
It's pretty sad that people don't understand the pseudo-atomicity of the POSIXish way of handling file names (as opposed to files).
(You could also have mentioned the distinction between file handles and inodes (and lazy unlinking) to explain the "program can write to a deleted file without causing harm" bit, but whatever.)
HAND.
The article shows clearly in both a screen shot and a video that the "Time remaining" estimate is still there in Windows 8 Explorer. It's simply hidden under a "More details" button by default.
Except as another poster stated, Word for Mac doesn't do it. Therefore it was a specific choice of the programmer(s) of the Word for Windows, but not of the programmer(s) of Word for Mac. Both programs are by Microsoft.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I don't believe you. See Mandatory File Locking For The Linux Operating System. Even with that, all you have to do is clear the gid bit to kill the "mandatory" lock, and the so-called locks are subject to race conditions.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
It's called DIRECTORY OPUS. Look it up, steal it or buy it - and your problems would have been solved a decade ago.
I use Windows at home, mostly by choice. Why? Because I use Linux at work, and I hate both of them, and it's nice to be pissed off for different reasons at work and at home.
There's plenty to like about Windows, and a lot to dislike about Linux.
Using such a program has a very good chance of causing random file corruption:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.04.windowsconfidential.aspx
"Forcing a handle closed is equivalent to reaching into a program and freeing some memory. The program thinks the handle (or memory) is still valid and will continue to use it. But since the handle is really free, it will be reused for something else."
Your program isn't reflecting the reality of the situation.
Under Windows, merely opening a file for writing always locks it exclusively, unless you use one of the funky shared-write modes.
CreateFile("winblows.txt",GENERIC_WRITE,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah); -- winblows.dat has an exclusive lock on it. You cannot manipulate or delete it until that handle is released.
Under Unix variants, if you simply open a file in write mode, you can still manipulate and delete it. That's why Debian can do updates of running services whereas even the mighty windows 7 (er sorry, windows NT 6.1?) requires a reboot every month to patch in those updates.
The downside of the Unix method is that if you delete a file that's open for writing from another process, the space won't be released until that other process closes the file (or is terminated, which also closes the file). This, however, lets you use the files in a /tmp fashion without having to actually place them in /tmp, with a faster release to boot.
I'm not familiar with OSX ; I would have assumed it's the same as Linux/*BSD/etc, but some of the other posts and tests submitted suggest otherwise.
Debian 5.0:
rene@tessa:~/test$ cat > ABCD /home/rene/test/ABCD
^Z
[1]+ Stopped cat > ABCD
rene@tessa:~/test$ lsof | grep ABCD
cat 3263 rene 1w REG 3,1 0 429757
rene@tessa:~/test$ mv ABCD EFGH
rene@tessa:~/test$ ls
EFGH
rene@tessa:~/test$ fg
cat > ABCD
abcd's contents
rene@tessa:~/test$ ls
EFGH
rene@tessa:~/test$ cat EFGH
abcd's contents
Writing into a file simultaneously from multiple handles is possible but not advised.
The OS itself permits this. The problem is that setting the correct sharing flags when opening a file is a chore that many developers don't do. This is exacerbated by the fact that Win32 CreateFile() function requires the caller to specify what he wants to permit others to do, not what he wants to prohibit them to do (dwShareMode parameter and FILE_SHARE_* constants). If you're being a good citizen, you should pass FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE | FILE_SHARE_DELETE, but it's just so damn simple to pass 0 there - which has the effect of an exclusive file lock - that many do just that. Also, many higher-level frameworks wrapping CreateFile pass zero by default.
In contrast, on Unix, the default is no locking, and you need to explicitly call fcntl(), which most programs don't do. This may mean that some Unix programs are not correctly locking files when they should (and would e.g. crash or misbehave if the file is modified while they're working on it), but in practice it's rare to hit it, while incorrect overboard locking is much more likely to result in user annoyance. In that sense, POSIX API encourages developers to do the thing that is most often right and less annoying to the user.
I'm using windows XP right now because one of the things I do most with my PC is run Civilization 2. It won't run on WINE, and it won't run on Windows later than XP. It won't even run in XP mode on Windows 7.
I also have Ubuntu on this system but I spend more time in XP.
I'd like Windows to die, but I'm still playing classic games and don't want to have to use a separate system or a virtual machine. (I got tired of vmware vms dying on me, and nothing else has working 3d.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It does support many directly, actually. And for the rest, there's XP Mode.
Those mandatory locks are not POSIX. Thus number of cases where they actually add value are small. Traditionally, Linux advocates POSIX interfaces and defacto standards. In this vein, for the vast majority of use cases, alternative co-operative locking is by far preferred and as an advantage, you entirely avoid the cluster fuck that is file locking under Windows.
Looks like KDE to me.
There's also an interesting quirk on Linux and probably many other Unix-like systems where if any program has a deleted file open for reading, you can't remount the filesystem as read-only and therefore can't shut the system down cleanly. Only really affects people writing init systems because everything else gets killed during the shutdown process though.
I gave up on search, I use "dir /b /s *term*" every single time. It's a lot faster, and you don't lose out on the GUI because it doesn't do things like sort anyway (not on large file searches), and it likes to start over just when you found your file.
Redirect the output to a file and open it with something better than notepad, and you got your search working again.
No it's not free, it's pirated. But he is correct on one point: Visual Studio has no DRM. In fact, Microsoft's developer tools are the only products they make with absolutely no real attempt at copy protection. No DRM, no Activation, not even a disk check or something. Just a product key and you're away. And since the only real place people get Visual Studio is MSDN, they don't even see that as Microsoft bakes the key into the installer.
But this guy's computer is probably running 8 botnet nodes and a couple of viruses. And Norton.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
How about all HDDs? I have to do this one by one and I have seven drives from HDDs! :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
File locking is well understood and OS agnostic. It's only the Windows haters who try to misrepresent it as a flaw in Windows.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
In after the millions of nerdrage arguments about the finer points of file locking semantics that will inevitably follow (and have), I have an even more modest wish. Forget operating on the locked files for now: when I try to copy/move/delete a directory of 10,000 files, of which 3 are locked, will this new Windows file manager go ahead and copy/move/delete the other 9,997 instead of freezing for half a minute and then bombing out of the process on the first failure?
(As much *fun* as it is to clean out the Windows temp directory via manual binary search to find the actually deletable ones...)
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Can you expand on the technique you might use to replace rm with rm ?
You don't need to reboot to replace open files in Windows, either, you just need to close whatever it is that has them open.
I see. Do you feel equally "hindered" by memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking ?
No file is going to get replaced without your authorisation.
Indeed. Such crazy "hoops" as creating a second copy of the cp or mv executables and using those to overwrite the originals. Mind-bending stuff.
There was actually a very good reason for that. In the old days, applications didn't have access to a lot of memory, so certain apps couldn't load the whole file into memory and had to view/edit it on-the-fly. Of course, nowadays, this is no longer an issue, but I guess some developers just got stuck with the old paradigm.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
Repeat Scenario 1, but this time with MS Wordpad instead of MS Word. You'll find no trouble renaming the file while it's still "open". As some posters have pointed out, Windows is not the issue, it's applications like MS Word.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
kill the handle. The app will hate you for it, but it will let you overwrite.
I'm surprised no one else has picked up on the fact that it bears starting similarities to the KDE file copy dialog.
Here are the images, for those who didn't RTFA:
Link 1
Link 2
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
You're impressions of Windows are outdated. It has been a stable OS since XP was released.
Not hardly. It wasn't until SP2 and serious tweaking that it became anything close to "stable", and it still has issues even today.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I gave ubuntu a shot about a year ago, installing it on relatively old hardware.... 2.4GHz Athlon X4 with GeForce 3200 integrated graphics, etc.
It works flawlessly, installed in less than 20 minutes, and only took another hour to configure various items to make it a media server, share screens with other systems, install an AFP file share, a couple of DBs, handbrake, etc. It all just worked.
I also have a copy of W7 Ultimate. It sits on the shelf, unused after the initial install on another system. That system now runs OSX, which is much more user friendly and useful.
So, do my anecdotes beat your anecdote?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
the obvious answer here would be:
get a mac.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
with process explorer you can lookup file handles
With Linux you are required to upgrade AT LEAST once every 3 years.
Not if you run Centos etc.
7 years' support, same as RHEL.
And exactly which OS(es) allows you to rename or move files that have write exclusive locks on them? Because, from what I can see this has, again, nothing to do with Windows.
Windows does have some unusual limitations which make it difficult to replace programs and DLLs if they are running or loaded. On Linux, MacOS X, most Unixes one can simply delete the program or DLL and create a new one with the same name. Processes which loaded it before you replaced it keep their connection to the old file. When the last such process terminates, the disk spaces used by the file is freed.
In contrast, Windows does not allow one to delete an open file (whether it is locked or not). This makes upgrading applications and OS components much more complicated. It is necessary to close all running instances of the program or DLL to be upgraded. In the case of system processes or important DLL files, this may not be possible. It may be that the best one can do is store the new files elsewhere and create a script which will copy them into place during the next reboot (when almost all programs and services are stopped).
Can you expand on the technique you might use to replace rm with rm ?
rm is a poor example since it seldom runs for more than a few seconds. Firefox is a better example. On Linux one can generally use Firefox while a batch of upgrades is being installed even if Firefox is one of the things being upgraded. (I say generally because occasionaly there will be a slight incompatibiity between the new and old Firefox which does not clear up until one restarts Firefox.)
You don't need to reboot to replace open files in Windows, either, you just need to close whatever it is that has them open.
In many cases the only practical way to close them is to reboot.
Why? I have no reason to leave Windows.
Windows 7 by itself was a huge improvement over the file copying in XP. I didn't bother with VIsta, so maybe that's when it got better. I don't know.
What ma I going to do now for cryptographically strong random numbers now? Count radioactive decays or something?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Of course, you need to restart Firefox to take advantage of any updates, which puts you in exactly the same situation.
And in Linux you would need to restart pretty much everything, which is essentially the same as rebooting.
I will also make my standard point that if a server reboot - scheduled or otherwise - impacts the SLA of any service, your architecture is broken.