Before Vista, doing a Cut/Paste of a file on the same driver over an
existing file would simply yield a rename (or two if Recycle Bin is
enabled). In Vista, the destination file is Overwritten and then the
data is copied over it.
Was there any specific reason this was done? I am guessing with the
ever increasing use of symlinks, Explorer doesn’t assume the file is on
the same physical device (rather it would assume it’s on a different
drive??), but this was never a problem before.
The question popped on another forum, and got me curious because my
driver handles renames sometimes in an application agnostic way.
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Kind regards, Dejan
http://www.alfasp.com
File system audit, security and encryption kits.
I doubt anyone reading this list will have much insight into why things are done within Explorer. It’s an application program that seems to revel in obfuscated behaviors. It may be, as you suggested, nothing more than a “how do I deal with some obscure case where the rename fails because…” Or it may be due to the desire to implement “rename with replace” semantics without using “rename with replace” because the implementer didn’t know that was an option.
It is an interesting change, since for a really big file this is a HUGE performance hit (e.g., moving a video file from directory ‘A’ to ‘B’ can now take many minutes rather than under a second.) I’m surprised someone hasn’t complained about this serious knock to performance.
Tony
Tony Mason
Consulting Partner
OSR Open Systems Resources, Inc.
http://www.osr.com
> I doubt anyone reading this list will have much insight into why things are done within Explorer. It’s an application program that seems to revel in obfuscated behaviors. It may be, as you suggested, nothing more than a “how do I deal with some obscure case where the rename fails because…” Or it may be due to the desire to implement “rename with replace” semantics without using “rename with replace” because the implementer didn’t know that was an option.
Yep, that’s why I thought someone from MS has insight into it.
It is an interesting change, since for a really big file this is a HUGE performance hit (e.g., moving a video file from directory ‘A’ to ‘B’ can now take many minutes rather than under a second.) I’m surprised someone hasn’t complained about this serious knock to performance.
Probably one rarely needs to move big files while having a copy of them in the destination folder.
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Kind regards, Dejan
http://www.alfasp.com
File system audit, security and encryption kits.