Reasons for using xycopy?

[aminomancer]

I'm just curious what the justification for writing that program was, are there problems with the native copy handler? I can see that xycopy provides more explicit options for collisions but is there a performance difference? I'm willing to switch over to it but the interface is pretty different so I'll have to get used to it for a while. Just want to make sure it's at least not slower than windows'. Thanks

[jaywalker32]

Xycopy is the only way to make sure xyplorer specific file metadata such as tags, labels and comments are also copied along with the files. And you can queue up file operations to happen in sequence instead of all at the same time.

If you haven't started using the tags and color labels features, you should try it. It's a life changer.

[bdeshi]

Actually XY can copy those metadata without xycopy, as long as the copy operation is initiated within XY. Just having Configuration > Information > Tags > Copy tags on copy operations enabled is sufficient.

The impetus for XYcopy is explained here (from history.txt):

Code: Select all

v8.90.0003 - 2010-03-14 18:35
  +++ Special Experimental Edition Attempting To Handle Blocking Issues 
      with File Operations In Vista SP1 And Later.
      Since multi-threading is not an option within XY's current 
      development tools, I opted for multi-processing. There's a new 
      helper proggy called XYcopy.exe in the same path as XYplorer (it 
      is contained in the download packages from now on). XYcopy.exe 
      will handle Move, Copy, and Delete jobs in its own thread, which 
      of course means you can continue working in XYplorer while the 
      file operations are going on in the background.

[Leito]

I can see that xycopy provides more explicit options for collisions but is there a performance difference?

There's no performance improvement, nor it shouldn't be slower.

As you said, XYcopy offers more explicit options for collisions, as well a more detailed copy window, optional report, log file and a verification method (byte-to-byte or with a hash like MD5). But it lacks the following features offered by the Windows copy, which is why I still prefer the Windows version:

• Ability to pause the copy during a file copy (XYcopy allows you to pause the copy process, but it will restart the current file when resuming the copy).
• Transfer rate history.

[admin]

Sammay posted it already above, but just to make to totally clear again: XYcopy.exe provides zero extra functionality compared to XYplorer.exe. It's only purpose is to run in the background parallel to the main process. You can delete XYcopy.exe and XYplorer will continue to work with all features except one: background processing.