
Windows 8: Improving our file management basics: copy, move, rename, and delete - ghurlman
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/23/improving-our-file-management-basics-copy-move-rename-and-delete.aspx
======
IChrisI
I want the copy functionality to tell me about conflicts right away, rather
than when it starts copying that file. I also want it to continue the non-
conflicting files while I'm deciding.

I cannot tell from the video whether Windows 8 does this or not.

~~~
lukeschlather
>I also want it to continue the non-conflicting files while I'm deciding.

That's the big point. The most serious usability flaw is when doing a large
copy, and every single file with a permissions issue requires user
intervention to make the copy continue. Keep a running list of problem files,
and let me peruse them at my leisure - keep copying the rest.

------
steveb
This is the OS that is supposed to carry MS until at least 2015. If they are
going to unveil the cool stuff during BUILD, why just not wait a couple of
weeks?

\- The examples seem dated, like people copying pictures over USB drives in
the era of facebook and dropbox. He runs the example on a netbook, which I
guess means after his sister leaves he needs to get another USB drive and copy
those files again to his PC.

\- Why did he copy files, edit them, copy them back and then need to figure
out what version he wanted to use? Now he's got two copies of the same
filename in different locations and they may get out of sync.

\- Why in the case of conflict, does a number have to be added to the file if
you want to keep both versions? Why not have some type of versioning and
conflict resolution built into the filesystem? Look at a user's computer,
directories are littered with filenames like "copy of Myfile (2)
2011_may.doc".

\- Where is the touch interface? Those buttons are small and all the dialogs
assume a mouse.

I do like the blog and I like that they introduce different members of the
Windows8 team, but they need to focus on more compelling features.

~~~
ashr
Facebook and Dropbox are not like running water yet and even that isn't
available everywhere. A _lot_ of users still use USB drives to copy pictures.

------
tptacek
Can you imagine Apple reassuring its users that there will be a "vibrant
market" for 3rd party providers of what became Lion features for a long time?

~~~
rat
Didn't OS X not have restore from trash until recently(even after gnome)?

~~~
thatjoshguy
But OS X did have the consolidation of file transfer dialog boxes for a long
time.

(Although it still has woeful conflict resolution <http://cl.ly/9Zqg>)

~~~
rimantas
Lion lets you keep both.

~~~
megablast
Lion does not let you skip files that you don't want copied, if they already
exist. Which is a ridiculous choice, and one that is very hard to work around.

------
ww520
One copy tool that's not well known is RichCopy from Microsoft. It's a great
copy util when dealing with huge amount of files. It supports parallel copy,
resume from failed, and copy only changed files.

~~~
sliverstorm
So Windows users finally don't have to install cygwin for rsync

~~~
runjake
I suppose. If you didn't know about Robocopy
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy>) which has been around since the NT
days.

Rsync under Cygwin was always too slow. Any sort of significant I/O is slow
under Cygwin.

~~~
heresy
Robocopy, while useful, does not have very many of the features of rsync,
apart from retries.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync>

~~~
runjake
But with all the problems of rsync and cygwin on Windows, Robocopy is the more
logical choice for such tasks. I'm not going to load up explorer.exe in WINE
on Linux so I can move some files around with the mouse.

------
DCoder
Am I the only one who still uses Total Commander instead of Windows Explorer
whenever possible? I'd love to see this multiple-jobs-in-movecopy-queue
functionality in it, but in all other situations it suits me so much better.

~~~
roel_v
Is it sufficiently better than FreeCommander to justify the 48 USD?

(also, has that website been updated since 1995? 'Order by fax' - WTF? 'Now
also with Paypal!' - Uh?)

~~~
4ad
You can install the trial and it will run forever.

------
glhaynes
I guess my first feeling when I see that histogram is ... that's not something
I've ever wanted.

Pause button is kinda cool though.

~~~
mikeknoop
I think the histogram solves the usability issue where a network transfer is
hung up but the "transfer speed" linearly, slowly drops off (because it is
calculated as a total average). The only way to verify the transfer previously
is to check if the total transfer percent/value changes absolutely.

~~~
glhaynes
Wouldn't a rolling average of the last 15 seconds solve that problem?

~~~
Fizzer
It wouldn't solve it, it would just reduce it. It would still take 15 seconds
to be able to identify that your connection dropped if you judged based off of
that figure alone.

~~~
glhaynes
If your throughput suddenly dropped to 0 and you were watching a 15-second
rolling average of that throughput speed, you'd within a very few (far less
than 15) seconds know that your transfer speed had cratered.

------
moondowner
I tried not to troll this, but these kinds of dialogs are present in GNOME for
long time: <https://twitpic.com/6aiqxt>

\- at the end of the day, that's what most of end users are going to notice.

I have high doubts about the pause button too, will it freeze the window to
'Not Responding' or it will just pause the operation in progress...

~~~
halo
It's interesting to note the difference between the Windows 8 dialog has
compared to the GNOME one.

You can minimise the Windows 8 dialog.

On Windows 8, the dialog shows both where the files are coming from and where
they're going to.

By default, Windows hides most information in favour of a percentage. Click
"More details" and Windows shows you much more information than GNOME does -
Windows has emphasis on power user information.

The Windows dialog's layout is much better. The GNOME dialog's buttons stick
out. GNOME's dialogs are really ugly and this is no exception.

It really shows the difference in polish between the two products.

My criticisms of Windows' dialog is that 'flat buttons' are aesthetically
appealing but not particularly user-friendly, and perhaps Windows should show
filesize and progress by default.

~~~
sapphirecat
> You can minimise the Windows 8 dialog.

IIRC, if you "closed" the gnome one, it went to the systray, which is a UI
problem all its own.

Also, you can pause the win8 operations, not just cancel them.

As for ugliness, this seems to be a shot of Hardy, give or take, so 2008-ish.
I would say that the Ambiance theme that debuted to much controversy in 2010
is improved over the screenshot. (And neither of these are Gnome's default.)

------
typicalrunt
Reading this article makes me notice the difference between Windows and OSX/
_nix. Windows is allowing the user to pause and schedule their copy
operations, whereas OSX and_ nix just provide a copy window with the ability
to cancel the operation.

Even when I want to delete something in Win7, I get the message "Discovering
items...". In that time, my *nix box has already deleted it and moved onto the
next task.

I wish they wouldn't spend so many expensive developer hours to make an
efficient pausing mechanism on your copy and move operations when instead they
could focus on why the copy and move operations are taking so long in the
first place.

------
jmilloy
I got excited... I was hoping for renaming and moving files that are in-use.
That continues to be the bane of my win7 experience.

~~~
rbanffy
That's something that has been annoying me since the first NT... Today it
annoys less because my contact with Windows machines is much smaller, but it
still bites me every once and then.

------
lloeki
Would it tell me beforehand that not enough space is available instead of
failing midway? Also, I can see a use case for this pause item here: not
enough space? we paused the transfer so that you can free up space and resume,
or cancel at will.

The _"use pause to prioritise the thing I'm not interacting with"_ part is
egregious at best. Let me drag/drop the activities to prioritise them: _"I
want THAT one to complete faster, so I move it to the top"_ seems much more
pertinent UX.

Besides, having ten parallel copies is a sure performance killer on a single
disk. Certainly having a queue with a bunch of worker slots per (read+write)
device could be a nice design. A new copy task from disk A to disk B could
thus be delayed because there are already a network transfer to disk A and a
copy from USB key to disk A in progress. Number of per disk workers could be
dynamically adjusted according to IO wait times on a given disk, so that a
non-copy task (like starting an application or opening a file) would get
priority. Raising/lowering priorities would automatically start/pause
transfers according to available workers.

~~~
4ad
It can't know in advance if it has free space or not.

1) Other files might get deleted in the process freeing more space.

2) Other files might get copied to the same volume as well claiming space.

3) There may be transparent compression involved meaning that you could copy
more data then it seems or that the original data would claim more space in
the target volume.

~~~
lloeki
I'm on a PC. I'm copying a 30GB total (VM splitted disk VMware image, a bunch
of selected folders containing photos or whatever) on an external disk with
only 10GB left. The thing should tell me beforehand if I have enough space,
not midway through the process.

Yes I could look it up beforehand, but why make me take three actions (look
for free space on device, look for total space required, order to copy) when
one would be sufficient? The computer should do the tedious tasks and let me
decide.

~~~
4ad
But I just explained that it is impossible to know in advance if it there's
free space or not...

------
AshleysBrain
The graphs of transfer rates are cool and all, but consider the average "mom"
user - what are they going to do with that? Is a complete graph of transfer
speed really necessary? It seems a bit of geekyness thrown in because it's
"cool" rather than adding significant extra value over a simple text label
with the current transfer speed.

~~~
Maakuth
I don't suppose this "mom" user would click "More information" -button at all.

------
redguava
Can't help but think the file transfer rate charts is development effort that
could have been better spent elsewhere. I don't really need graphically
representation of the speed of my copy/paste from start to end.

------
yason
The current copying paradigm is utter 70's. Here's a hint for you from the
2000's, you Microsoft or Linux or Gnome developers:

What I would like is that copies seem instant and transparent. Actually, I
wouldn't like to think of copying at all. I "copy" (or merely just order) a
file to (appear in) some place and it immediately becomes accessible from
there. Or I decide to move it back a few seconds later and I can do that.

In reality the computer should manage the low-level copying internally and
consider it more like syncing.

I shouldn't have to care about how long something takes or how the kernel will
queue the actual copy operations, or whether it copies anything at all but
just creates a copy-on-write mapping to the same data. I also shouldn't have
to wait for copying: I should be able to just copy something and immediately
turn off the computer. The operating system would continue copying the blocks,
if necessary, when it's restarted later. All copy operations ought to be
logically atomic as well: either a copy is immediately made or it isn't, the
physical details of copying and remapping the corresponding blocks shouldn't
be any of my concern.

So, an immediate, transaction-based and logically coherent file operations
with automatic kernel-level delayed-I/O backend is what I would call the
2000's.

I hope that there already is at least one research O/S somewhere that would do
this.

~~~
chetan51
Why stop there? Why not just stop worrying about files and folders, and just
think about documents, pictures and videos instead? Why should I have to care
about the low-level filesystem at all?

Cue iOS.

~~~
trezor
_Cue iOS._

Which was a nice experiment which proved that it didn't work. You know what
you can't do on iOS which most users want to be able to do?

Yeah. Work with the same document from multiple viewpoints, or applications.
You can't work with documents across applications on iOS because you
supposedly don't have files.

Like I said: A nice experiment, but it proves that "no files" only works for
the simplest of use-cases and limits the ability to work with data beyond the
limits that people reasonably expect to find.

~~~
ugh
Nah. iOS didn’t have the time to prove anything at all. It’s not done yet.

------
krmmalik
I was really impressed with Office 2007 when it first came out. After watching
the video that demonstrated how it was developed incorporating extensive user
feedback etc i was even more impressed. I expected the same methodologies
would be applied to Vista and they werent so i was somewhat dissapointed, but
Windows 7 turned out pretty good.

That said, Office 2010 was over-engineered in many ways. I just hope they dont
over engineer Windows 8

------
forgotAgain
Every day I have to work on both Vista and Windows 7 machines. The W7 user
experience is much better. One of the reasons it's much better is that
Explorer is much better. The user experience with Vista Explorer truly sucks
and that suckiness always seems to be in my face. My point being that Explorer
matters and any improvements to it with W8 would be a large positive.

------
Turing_Machine
I notice that file extensions are visible in some of the screenshots. Does
that mean they're getting rid of that dumb (IMO) policy of hiding the
extensions from users by default? The result was lots of naive users clicking
on nekkid-pitcher-of-hot-celeb.jpg.exe because they couldn't see the .exe
part, in exchange for...what, exactly?

~~~
monkeypizza
And they punished those of us who make them visible again, by having the "edit
filename" function mix the extension with the filename, even though wanting to
change the extension is about 100 times more rare than wanting to change the
characters right before the extension.

I've seen a nice version of this in linux somewhere - when you push F2 two
boxes come up and the cursor is positioned in the one to the left of the dot
but you can move across to it easily.

EDIT: Ah, this is available in windows 7 too. Nice, finally.

~~~
IChrisI
In Windows 7 (maybe Vista too), the "edit filename" function lets you edit the
extension, but has only the filename selected. Thus Edit -> start typing ->
Enter changes the filename, leaving the extension intact.

~~~
thatjoshguy
For what it's worth, OS X does this <http://cl.ly/9ZeF>

------
mrmaddog
Are multiple large copy jobs common? I can't recall ever doing large copies of
two distinct sets of files simultaneously, which makes me wonder when I'd ever
use this dialog box. Would be curious to know what their telemetry data shows.

Another thing I think is interesting: the graph will never be intuitive
because they've compounded the progress bar with the actual plotting. Thus,
fast operations will take up a larger percentage of the graph because during
fast operating speeds more progress will have been completed. Conversely, slow
periods in the graph will be disproportionately smaller compared to the actual
percentage of time that the slow operation took.

------
ashcairo
It really bugged me when he hit 'more details', then had to drag the window
back up to the center of the screen, because the details didn't fit in view.

------
yread
I use Total commander for these things on Windows, it already has queuing and
the replace dialog does have more features ( <http://flint-
inc.ru/Temp/over_dlg_3.png> ) but this looks cool too and I like the
histograms :)

------
Athtar
While I like the improvements, I am a little disappointed that they are not
implementing parallel/multi-threaded copying. It might not be something that a
majority of users would need, but it feels like it should be something that
should be natively supported by the OS.

~~~
pbz
What do you mean? It showed two batches being copied in parallel. If anything,
they should do less in parallel and rather queue up jobs between same disks.

~~~
Athtar
Yes, you can have multiple copy operating running in parallel but the way
Windows works, the files themselves are copied in serial order (within an
individual copy operation). Whereas with tools like RichCopy, you are actually
copying multiple files in parallel.

See here for example;
[http://msinetpub.vo.llnwd.net/d1/keithcombs/blog/images/Rich...](http://msinetpub.vo.llnwd.net/d1/keithcombs/blog/images/RichCopybulkfilecopytoolreleasedgetither_11531/RichCopy_thumb.jpg)

This is incredibly useful when you need to copy folders with a lot of
(smaller) files. Think pictures, music, etc.

~~~
dpark
I'd be interested in seeing benchmarks that demonstrate an improvement when
doing this. I'd expect that the average case is slower due to increased disk
contention.

------
bane
Dear Microsoft: take this

[http://blog.codesector.com/category/code-sector-
software/ter...](http://blog.codesector.com/category/code-sector-
software/teracopy/)

clean it up a bit, build it into windows

Thanks

------
oskee80
Great, but I wish they'd fix this first: <http://goo.gl/KzQBG>

~~~
ars
Don't use url shorteners here. The real url is
[http://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_7-f...](http://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/windows-explorer-expands-folders-
inappropriately/50a81b05-da98-4d55-821d-55ffbbd0e998)

~~~
oskee80
Thanks for that... Hadn't noticed HN automatically truncates long URLs.

------
mikeknoop
Love the x220 in the video.

------
georgieporgie
Ugh. So, instead of tackling something like auto-queuing of copy operations to
prevent disk thrashing, they did the 'hard' work of adding a pause button and
some silly bling. Incidentally, if that conflict-resolution dialog doesn't
provide mouse-over image enlargement/preview, I'm going to instantly hate it.

~~~
acqq
Yes, from their example ("pausing" one task speeds up the rest, and graphs
show speed progress "hills and valleys") it can be concluded that they let
copy tasks run in parallel instead of queuing the files. That's practically a
guaranteed way to produce more fragmented disk layouts. Well done, current
MSFT programmers.

You understand what's going on in MSFT when the blog post ends with the line
like "All of this adds up to building a significantly improved copy
experience, one that is unified, concise, and clear, and which puts you in
control of your experience." A clear example of managerspeak -- adjusted to
sound good among other managers not to mean something.You see even from where
the battles for "bling" come.

~~~
Maakuth
Out of curiosity: what operating system does automatically queue separately
initiated copy operations? Wouldn't it be quite confusing if some copy
operation just wouldn't start at all before some other - possibly very time
consuming - operation was concluded?

~~~
ori_b
Linux. It doesn't queue individual files,but it does schedule disk blocks to
minimize seeks and maximize throughput. Look up "elevator algorithm " and
"Linux IO scheduler" for more detail.

~~~
sciurus
Windows does this too, of course. Any modern OS does.

[http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/7/af7777e5-7dcd-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/7/af7777e5-7dcd-4800-8a0a-b18336565f5b/Priorityio.doc)

~~~
ori_b
I'd be surprised if it didn't. Then again, I was rather surprised that Windows
XP's throughput dropped massively when I started copying more than one file at
once, so it seems that it didn't do a good job of it.

~~~
sjs
sciurus did say modern which XP is most definitely not.

~~~
rbanffy
XP is pretty modern in relation to elevator seek. It's been used since the
70's, at least.

------
drivebyacct2
I'm very excited for Windows 8 and these posts are a big help in that (as well
as what I perceive to be a great opportunity for the Windows platform across
phones, tablets and desktop).

Maybe Microsoft will actually do this correctly instead of implementing it
like Nautilus, where the copies aren't queued and thus happily trash the disk
(hell, even the pause feature is quite welcome).

~~~
caf
I've noticed that the OS X shell does that too (not queue copies that have the
same destination device).

------
trezor
From the comments here, it seems that I will still need TeraCopy when Windows
8 comes around. That's a bit of a bummer, but I can live with that.

Seriously though. TeraCopy does just the right thing and is one of those "must
have" Windows additions, despite the ugly-looking UI.

For those interested: <http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php>

~~~
sjwright
Unfortunately TeraCopy appears to be abandonware, as it hasn't seen a new
version for nearly a year, and no real attempt has been made to deal with its
terrible network copy performance under Windows 7.

------
lean
So, almost as good as Teracopy?

------
yhlasx
This was my 9th grade cs project.

------
mattyohe
How many other experiences at Microsoft are referred to as “copy Jobs”?

