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Copy Paste + Command C + V

fab5freddy

fab5freddy

macrumors 65816
Original poster
I have a little observational question regarding the Copy Paste Function
of the MAC Tiger OS X System i am running........

I just copied around 200 GB of data onto another harddrive i have...

All i did was select all, and type: Command + C
and then Command + V to paste the drive into my other drive....

What i wanted to ask was:

How in the world can the OS copy 200 GB in a matter of 1 second ?!
that's all it took to copy the 200 GB....

I am just very curious to know how a little Command + C,
can so quickly copy 200 + GB of data....??!!
 
It'll take longer than that between drives. The Finder will not lock up or freeze whilst it's doing it. There should be a progress window somewhere...
 
Yea doesnt happen, I would check that you have done it properly and not just copied across maybe one file or something by accident.
 
Maybe you mistakingly copied several shortcuts which pointed to files whose sum was 200GB? 😕
 
ok, what i meant to ask was:

When i type "Command + C"
has it already copied the entire 200 GB of data......
....or has it just copied the folder structure....?

because then, when i type: "Command + V"
it takes the drive about 20 minutes to Paste the data to the new drive......
 
When you hit command+C no data is copied (where would it be copied to? You've not provided a destination yet). Rather a promise to provide the file/folder paths is placed on the clipboard. When you paste the application you are pasting into asks for the path(s) and does what is appropriate, so if you paste into the Finder it copies the data, into text edit it copies the paths as text etc.
 
it copies the file names and location to the clipboard. you can look at what youve copied to the clipboard by choosing "Show Clipboard" in Finder's Edit menu.
 
fab5freddy said:
ok, what i meant to ask was:

When i type "Command + C"
has it already copied the entire 200 GB of data......
....or has it just copied the folder structure....?

because then, when i type: "Command + V"
it takes the drive about 20 minutes to Paste the data to the new drive......
Click to expand...

When you select files and then hit command+C, Finder merely compiles a list of things that you've selected to copy. That's all it does.

Then it waits for you to select a location for which to paste. When you issue the paste command (command + V), that is when the writing begins. It then looks at the files you chose to copy and then writes exact copies to the destination.

If the computer were to store a copy of everything into the RAM or something right when you hit copy, that would be horribly inefficient.
 
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