Suggestions about file copying/moving

IMO Directory Opus's primary mission is to copy and move files around, yet this is the least up-to-date piece of the whole application. Directory Opus is not keeping up with the state of the art when it comes to file management, instead relying overly on old and/or outdated Windows APIs. I hate that I find myself killing a file operation in Directory Opus to go start it up in TeraCopy or some other file copy/mover application. Heck, I wrote ExQueues years ago, my file copy/move queueing application to get around limitations in Explorer and Directory Opus when copying multiple files. TeraCopy also queues file operations. (This is not a promo for TeraCopy...just pointing out why I am disappointed.

Features that Directory Opus needs to stay competitive:

  • The Copy/Move dialog should absolutely have a MB per second indicator.
  • The Copy/Move dialog should absolutely have a pause button.
  • The Copy/Move dialog absolutely should not pop to the foreground when it is minimized and you Alt-Tab back to the main Lister. It is not modal and should not act like it.
  • The Copy/Move dialog would ideally allow operations to be queued, and allow the user to manipulate that queue (along the lines of ExQueues). Make it an advanced option is fine.
  • The Copy/Move dialog should be taking advantage of the newer Windows API calls for Network and File IO priority. I should be able to lower the priority of the network and file IO so it doesn't interfere with the rest of what I am doing on the computer/network.

One final annoyance:

  • Please, please get rid of the popup that tells me I need to insert a disc, just because I accidentally clicked the wrong drive.

Directory Opus is one of the main reasons I am still on Windows at all to be honest. It is the best File Manager on any OS, hands down. This is why I am disappointed at the stagnation on such basic and important functionality. Please show it some love. <3

MB/sec and pause buttons are both already there, if you turn on the full progress dialog. Type "speed timer" into the filter in Preferences and it should highlight the option you need to turn on.

The dialog getting focus when you return to a lister can be annoying, but it could also annoy people if they lose the progress dialog behind the lister. Maybe it should be optional or something?

A copy queue has been requested lots of times and is on the to-do list. If you want to nag someone about it, nag GPSoftware since this is a user-run forum.

Which Windows file copy priority APIs are you talking about?

The insert-disc notification is something that I think will be improved, from what I have heard.

PS, I renamed the thread so that people reading the list of subjects & searching the forum will know what it's about.

That´s strange, because my version of Opus has that function.

The same applies here.

This sounds reasonable. You could file a request at gpsoft.com.au/Support.html

This has been frequently requested & maybe it will be included in a future version.

[quote]The Copy/Move dialog should be taking advantage of the newer Windows API calls for Network and File IO priority.

one final annoyance:
Please, please get rid of the popup that tells me I need to insert a disc, just because I accidentally clicked the wrong drive.[/quote]

How would the program know, that you clicked accidently on that drive? You´d be better off using the "hideempty" parameter.

My hope is that even though these are the user forums, that GPSoft pays attention to them, and that if enough people agree or complain or have additional suggestions maybe they will get moved up on the priority.

I would not be better off with the 'hideempty' parameter. That's the first thing I disabled when they added it to Windows 7 Explorer. It completely messes with workflow when you are ripping multiple discs, etc. by redrawing the tree and kicking you out of the empty drive, etc. This is such an easy fix. It doesn't need to know that I accidentally clicked it, it just needs a more user friendly interface than a modal dialog.

I wrote Exqueues 5+ years ago (and posted about it in the 3rd party tools 4 years ago). It took me a couple of weeks to write having never written for Win32. This is important functionality to have these days, as we are inundated with large files.

'Speed timer' returns nothing, but 'Speed' does return something that is set to default only with FTP sites. That is WAY not obvious. But glad it is there. Yay!

Adding a new one to the list:

  • Moving must detect when the target destination of a move is on a different Mounted Volume even though it is on the same 'drive letter'. File size does work properly, but the move displays no progress because it thinks it doesn't need to show a progress. I mount all of my drives ala the /mnt folder on Linux (drive letters need to die in general). That way I only need to mount one network share on my other computers to have everything available.

As far as the Network IO and File IO Priority: This was added in Vista. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vi ... chnologies
"Windows Vista also implements I/O scheduling as prioritized I/O.[1] Disk I/O requests in Windows Vista are assigned priorities; a higher priority request is given preferential treatment, over a request that has a lower priority, during the execution of the request. Windows Vista defines five priority classes – Very Low, Low, Normal, High and Critical. By default I/O requests are assigned Normal priority."

Thanks for the feedback, and especially pointing out the hidden pause/speed feature.

GPSoft sometimes read the forum but there's no guarantee that they will read (or remember) every post. They'll pay more attention to people who bother to write to them.

There's no need to discuss the empty-drive pop-up; it will be addressed by making the message non-modal (which is about all I can say right now).

I agree that the speed-timer stuff is pretty obscure. I'd like to see the progress dialog itself have a button which toggles between the two modes.

That's definitely worth reporting to GPSoftware separately. If it's just dropped into the middle of this forum thread it'll easily be overlooked. (Please see Ask one question per post.)

Thanks for the I/O priority URL. How would you see that being used in Opus? As an argument to the Copy command or something else?

Agreed on the toggle for full v minimal progress dialog. I could imagine a couple of ways that File IO priority would be interfaced:

  • Some sort of option on the full progress dialog
  • Some option in the copy command 'advanced' settings, but that would let you pick a number of ways to expose it like, 'alt-shift drag and drop' would pop up a dialog before starting to ask what priority.
  • If in fact a queuing system was implemented, being able to set file io priority individually or for all queued files at once.

As far as a full featured queuing system, these would be a nice set up options:

  • When a large (configurable) file move/copy is started, if another one is in progress, start the copy but provide a single 'queue' button that will add it to the existing queue. How this might work precisely is up for debate.
  • Detect for copy/move collisions to prevent issues where changing the queue would invalidate a previously queued command. (ie. moving the same folder to two different destinations).
  • Optimize the file copies/moves based on destination devices: Ie. Automatically do simultaneous copies if one copy is from drive C to drive D (or mounted volume c:\ to mounted volume c:\mnt\shared if the 'shared' folder was a different drive) and another from drive E across the network.
  • Provide for tearing off/joining of queue items: If I want some copies specifically to occur at the same time as the main queue, it would be nice to tear them off into another queue.
  • Last queue used is the active queue for new actions.
  • Basic Move Up/Down, Move Top/Bottom, Remove, Remove All, Pause Selected (and the existing Pause All) ala ExQueues (but hopefully a nicer UI :slight_smile:

Just throwing ideas out there.
Thanks.

Oh, and on the File IO Priority: Being able to adjust the default (configurable by file size) for ALL file copies would be great. Ie.
Large file : [10MB]
Default File IO for large file operations: [Low]
Default File IO for small file operations: [High]