CODEWITHSUNDEEP
performanceoptimizationcopyhardware
anon01
anon01

Reputation: 11181

Performance of accessing files moved vs copied

I was casually wondering if there was a difference in read/write performance for files that are copied to the same folder as opposed to those moved (via mv).

I imagine that performing some serial operation to several files located in a contiguous memory block would be faster than those scattered across a hard drive. Such is the case (I guess ?) if you copy files vs move them from disparate origins. So... is there a performance difference of files moved vs copied to the same directory, how significant, and does it depend on storage technology (HDD, SSD)?

Note, I am not wondering whether mv vs cp is faster. Please don't respond with a description of the difference between the commands. Thanks!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 30

Answers (1)

Graeme
Graeme

Reputation: 1698

The way that move and copy works will have some (limited) baring on this assuming source and destination are located on the same physical volume.

However assuming source and destination are not the same volume both will behave the same in terms of writing the destination data. If the destination volume is completely empty and freshly formatted then you 'probably' stand a good chance of their data being written to a similar location. If there is or has been data written to the volume then there is no guarantee the file system won't simply scatter the data anyway.

The file system will ultimately decide where the data is to be stored on the actual storage medium, and it may decide that neighbouring blocks are not the best solution. Copy or Move is irrelevant, as both will require the file system to store the data.

Grouping those files by mount point is possibly the best way of ensuring they reside within a similar region of storage.

HTH

Upvotes: 1

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