Best Tips for Copy files faster in Windows

Every file read from and written to your hard drive is checked by your anti-virus software. When you run a single program or open a document, this happens so fast you don’t notice, but if you copy or move a thousand files, this checking process will significantly slow down your PC. If you know you have got a lot of files to copy, right-click your anti-virus software’s icon on the right-hand side of the taskbar and disable it while you copy, then turn it back on again afterwards.

Windows displays thumbnail images of photographs, which is handy when you’re browsing, but because the thumbnails are refreshed every second or two, this slows down your transfer when you’re moving lots of photos from one Explorer window to another. Close the Explorer windows once the copying has started, to stop the thumbnails refreshing and speed up the job.

Xcopy is a command-line tool from the days of DOS (Disk Operating System), before the Windows operating system took off, It still works today, and is much quicker at copying a large number of files than clicking and dragging in Explorer.

Robocopy, which stands for robust file copy, is another command prompt tool and it’s even better than Xcopy.



If you do not like typing commands, you can run Robocopy through a Windows interface using WinRoboCopy.