Having multiple threads running in your application the right way certainly can make it run more efficiently and be responsive, to just name a few advantages. MTCopy has this advantage.

It starts by spawning a number of threads to cooperatively perform I/O operations (multiple files multiple threads scenario, MMT) and divides large files to be copied into several sector aligned blocks (single file multiple threads scenario, SMT) if necessary, whereby you don't have to have your program blocked until a lengthy I/O operation is finished in the single thread scenario.

But certainly, the more threads you have doesn't mean the more efficiency you will get, you have to take the thread context switching overheads into consideration; otherwise, the program will spend much of its precious CPU time on context switching instead of on real work it should do.

The MTCopy application was developed to be a command line tool, so in order to run it, you need to specify the command line containing "[source file/folder] [destination file/folder] /t: [how many threads will be created during the copying process] /b: [the buffer size in KB/MB used during copying] /l: [threshold over which files of a certain size will be divided into small blocks and copied multithreadedly]". Once it starts to run, it will create a log file named "MTCopy.txt" under the c: drive root.

So you can copy a folder like: "MTCopy.exe "I:\Something" "I:\Something_" /t:2 /b:5m /l:10m" (using two threads for multiple file copying; for single file copying, use another two threads only when its size is equal to or over 10MB), or simply copy a large single file multithreadedly by using: "MTCopy.exe "I:\Something\something.wmv" "I:\Something_" /t:2 /b:5m /l:10m". It is recommended that the buffer size specified should be a multiple of the sector size; that way, the program will directly allocate that amount of memory instead of adjusting the buffer size such that it will be sector aligned.

Please note: the [source file/folder] and [destination file/folder] options should be double quoted; otherwise, they will be interpreted as several options if spaces exist in between.

Publisher: LiYS

Tags: Multi File Copy, Multi-thread File Copy,