SlowCopy
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Download SlowCopy.zip    v.2.0.1    size=223k
(older) SlowCopy.zip  v.1.2.0 

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Minimum Requirements: Windows Commander 4.51 

You don't know what WindowsCommander is? 
Hmm...
One way to classify windows users is in those who use WindowsCommander and those who use Explorer only. If you wish to download and see what WindowsCommander can do, visit http://www.ghisler.com/. 
Purpose + features
The purpose was to improve the copy function of WinCmd: 

By showing detailed info about time and speed: 
Total speed since the beginning; 
Current speed (average of the last second); 
Last copied file speed; 
Last copy job speed; 
Elapsed and estimated time; 
Number of files; 
Total amount of data to be copied and remaining data; 
By queuing copy jobs, so they will be executed one after another; 
Job: add, delete, move; 
Job info: files, size, copy method, source and destination directory; 
See how much of the total each job takes up; 
By allowing you to give to the copying thread a slower priority; 
In this version only fast (normal) and slow; 
older versions had a broader selection; 
By adding features like: 
Possibility to select from two modes of copying files in order to achieve maximum speed; 
Custom sized buffer; 
Updated free space on destination drive; 
Some non-important memory used by windows; 
Reading and Writing speed; 
Possibility of pausing and resuming anytime the copying process;

(Hi)story
Why the name SlowCopy? Because I wanted to do a program that will have the possibility to copy files slower (in background) in order not to disturb other applications. - But it turned out to be a very fast way to copy files; I didn't intended to be that way, but after I done it I have run lots of tests and the results were very good. The copy speed is highly dependent on the hard disk's speed and cache, file system type, fragmentation of files, file sizes and source & destination HDD. 

Installing
Copy files to WinCmd directory; 
Launch InstallSlowCopy.exe to put it to StartMenu and to ButtonBar 
or you can add it manually: all you have to know is that SlowCopy requires the following parameters: "%P" "%T" "%L", and for the StartMenu a pair of extra quotes is required ""%P" "%T" "%L"" What this parameters means you can find in WinCmd's help: 
%P  causes the source path to be inserted into the command line
%T  inserts the current target path
%L  create a list file in the TEMP directory with the names (long file names including the complete path) of the selected files and directories, and appends the name of the list file to the command line.
Using
In WinCmd select the left and right panels and mark files as usually, but instead of pressing F5 or clicking on the "F5 Copy" button do one of the following: a) press ctrl-alt-F5 (this is the shortcut key I use) or b) click on the SlowCopy icon in the ButtonBar.

If you hold CTRL until the main interface of SlowCopy appears it will start in PAUSE mode; press Pause again (the yellow button) to start copying;

 
Click image for the full view. 

  

General info
From my experiments I draw the following conclusions: 
when copying between 2 partitions of the same HDD or between 2 HDDs that are on the same cable (ribbon) large buffers (at least several megs) must be used to improve performance you must always use "InternalCopy"(default). On a Quantum lct15 HDD SlowCopy was almost 4 times faster than WindowsExplorer. On newer HDD (and NTFS partitions) the difference is less evident, SlowCopy being only about 25% faster than WindowsExplorer. 
when copying between 2 separate HDDs on separate cables (ribbons) the buffers has to be very small. WindowsExplorer performs very well in this conditions. If you use SlowCopy, use "CopyWithWinAPI" so it will use the same copy method as WindowsExplorer (this option will have effect only after the current file is being copied) disadvantage - updates the progressbar only when the file has finished.
I also tried to make the reading and writing in parallel, using two threads for this, and multiple buffers, but the results were modest, I couldn't outperform WindowsExplorer. 
On my machine it is the fastest way to copy files (if follow the 2 rules above) I tested with WinCmd, Explorer and DosNavigator; 
If you want to do your tests please note that I introduced 2 artificial delays at the beginning and at the end of the program (0.5 + 3 = 3.5 seconds) (the copy process is finished after the small beep and after the yellow color of the statistics) also note that the program itself will take about 0.5 seconds to launch. 


General Advice when copying: 
Use a Defrag utility (SpeedDisk); 
Use Cacheman to limit the amount of memory Windows9x uses for disk cache;
Bugs: 
When using a small buffer (a buffer of size 0 means 100k buffer) reading and writing speed give erroneous results due to the use of cache by windows; in this cases the green time-chart is also going up like crazy; 
Some "Abort" situations are not implemented; 
Jobs move up and down not implemented; 
The "Error mode" is not implemented; it was intended to be used for resuming broken files (especially useful when copying large files through slow networks when there is the possibility of being disconnected);
Program no longer under development