I have a gaming laptop and a phone, both of which have USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Gen 1 ports. I also use a USB 4 Type-C cable. Now, recently, I have downloaded music files of over 300GB. If I transfer them one by one, it takes a lot of time. Today, I compressed the folder to a single zip file, and the transfer finished in less than 20m. Why is that so?

  • deranger@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    23·
    2 days ago

    This does not match my experiences. Transferring files over USB would absolutely be faster than sending a zip and unzipping it on a flash drive. I can easily do 300MB/s over USB3.2 when transferring music files.

    Unzipping a large file is going to be a bunch of reads and write and the large file is going to transfer at the exact same speed as the smaller music files, which are not “small”, they’re still tens of MB. So, the zip and music files take roughly the same time except now you have to wait to unzip with one large file. It does not save time.

    Transferring tens of thousands of 1kb files will slow things down, and I’d zip this, but music files are big enough.

    • MotoAsh@piefed.socialEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      Not zipped to a flash drive. Zipped and sent over the same USB cable as sending the bunch of files.

      The actual transfer bandwidth attained does rely a ton on what connection speed gets negotiated. The overhead of how at least Windows deals with USB is very noticeable at lower speeds. 3.1 or less and I can guarantee you the zip option might start looking like a valid choice.

      Of course if you get 3.2gen2+ speeds negotiated, it’s going to be ‘fast enough’ either way assuming the devices can deliver on read/write…

      • deranger@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        22·
        2 days ago

        Understood. I’m also talking about sending a full zip over to the flash drive, then unzipping it on that same flash drive.

        Music files are large enough to not get affected by overhead like sending a ton of 1kb files. I see no significant difference in transfer time sending 100 10mb files or a single 1000mb file.

        This is a totally different story with actually small files (ie kilobytes). Music downloads are not small, they’re multiple megabytes.

        • MotoAsh@piefed.socialEnglish
          4·
          1 day ago

          Well if you’re unzipping on the flash drive, that’s a whole mountain worse than copying device to device. Why would you want to torture the flash drive and your patience like that?

          • deranger@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            13·
            1 day ago

            Right… that’s what I’m saying! My entire point.

            Sending a zip of music files to a phone, then decompressing that zip on the phone, seems like a really stupid idea to me. You’ve now set up a situation where you’re reading and writing to one drive rather than reading from one and writing to another.

            • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
              2·
              24 hours ago

              I feel like you are suggesting they would decompress the file over USB from the computer after it is transferred, and not use the phone to decompress it after it is transferred… Once it is transferred to the phone, just use the phone to decompress it.

              • deranger@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                12·
                23 hours ago

                No, that is not what I am suggesting at all.

                Decompressing the zip on the phone is an inefficient operation, as you are reading and writing to/from the same storage device. It’s much more efficient to forgo the zip altogether and just transfer the files from one device to the other. No zipping whatsoever.

                As said in other comments, it’s MTP that’s the issue here. Just use USB mass storage. MTP blows.