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rick3000

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 6, 2008
648
298
West Coast
When I drag and drop, say 3 files of various sizes across drives and finder status shows me 3 different estimated transfer times.

Are the times shown taking into account the other transfers, or are they estimating what the time would be if they where being transferred alone?

I ask because when one transfer ends, the other estimated times seem to become significantly shorter.

I've always wondered about this, thanks!
 
The estimate is based on sampling the speed of each transfer, and then doing the calculation of how long it would take at that rate. If you have more than one transfer to/from the same disk, then that is going to slow down each individual transfer.
However, all sorts of things can affect the speed at any given sample time, sometimes giving unlikely or constantly changing estimates.
estimation.png
 
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