TeraCopy Pro 4.0 Alpha: Sluggish interface during copy/move and other observations.
I've been working with the new alpha for a month now. Here are some observations I have noticed.
These observations are made during large copy/move jobs with millions of files of various size (1KB to 400GB). With 32X 512Kb buffer size on 16 threads. I also use SHA256 hash for verification. TeraCopy is installed in Program Files as per usual.
Sluggish interface
While a job is running, the interface will hang or become very sluggish if I interact with it. Any operation (opening settings, about in the main interface or changing between file list, target, options, status or log in on a particular job - as well as navigating between jobs) seems to bring the app to a halt for a few seconds.
Large/small file size combination will still only run in single-thread mode
If the copy/move job contains a mix of large or small files, the app will go into single-thread mode. As far as I can see, it will stay in this mode for the duration.
Pausing or stopping the job does not always work
When during a large copy/move operation, if the user tries to pause or stop the operations. This can sometimes never occur, the app has to be killed from the task manager to actually stop. This could be related to the same issues as the sluggish behaviour above.
Copy to LTFS does not deactivate NTFS-streams automatically.
I know this is not directly linked to the Alpha, nor is it a technical issue per se, but it is worth mentioning anyway. If a job has a LTFS target or any other target that does not have support for NTFS streams. TeraCopy will still copy over the stream files. This is of course helpful if what you want is to copy ADS, but in most cases, we don't. For now we have to set this as default behaviour for all copies and re-enable it when doing NTFS to NTFS copy/move jobs. A choice list with formats would be helpful here.
Log in to comment and vote
Comments5
Code Sector
Sep 19, 2024
The UI may experience slowdowns when all cores are fully occupied with hash calculations. We've introduced an option to use [max cores - 1]. Please try this setting to see if it improves performance.
Code Sector
Sep 19, 2024
Please test v4 beta. NTFS streams will be written only to the supported file systems.
Ole Aldric
Jul 30, 2024
Yet another observation:
I get these at random intervals, which causes TeraCopy to behave erratically. I need to restart the application, or it won’t obey pause or stop commands anymore.
Ole Aldric
Jul 19, 2024
Another observation: High computational costs associated with repainting the UI during file list scrolling cause the UI to block. What if you decouple the file list management from the main UI thread. Maybe even offload the file list operations to a separate process entirely. Then use IPC between instead? It could improve general responsiveness of the app.
Ole Aldric
Jun 21, 2024
As an addition. The sluggishness seems more prominent with "Always On Top" enabled. It will however delay repaint even when this option is disabled in most cases (except for activities in the interface after a bit of prior use). The computer also ramps up a lot when I activate the window and open for instance the settings panel and then close it again.