autocopy files to different drive

[DipDancer]

I would like to see a function that copies all files of a finished collection/.nzb file to a different drive, before the auto par2 checking&repairing and unraring takes place. the problem is when par2 checking occurs on the same disc on which the download directory is located as well it will horribly slow down the system, as soon as decoding of files and par2 checking (and even worse repairing) happen at the same time. I dont even have a slow comp (got a c2d @2.8 GHz, 2gb ram and samsung 500gb), but these 2 processes on the same drive simply take up approx 3-4x more time which would be needed for the whole copy to other drive&repair&unrar-from-there process. its especially anyoing when you just come home and your pc is in the middle of doing that, then its basically blocked for a longer period of time and you cant even do basic work like opening browser or the email program, which would be possible if all that took place on another HD. depending on the status of the process it might even be more efficient to cancel repairing, copy everything to another drive and start it again, most likely this will still be faster then.

I know there is already an auto unrar to different folder option, but the transfer to another folder/drive has to occur right after the download, before any par2 processing takes place to have it operating in the most efficient and fastest way.

[cr4zyfr4g]

why not just change default download dir to another drive?

[Hecks]

Firstly, I've never seen the type of slowdowns you're describing, and I have a Core Duo with lower system specs than yours.  I've always been able to do other tasks while Alt.Binz trundles away - including browsing, recording or encoding video, listening to music emailing etc etc. on the same (crappy) drive - which I have partitioned.  So I suggest that you investigate firstly whether your system is running as it should.  Do some read/write tests.

Secondly, you can offload yEnc decoding completely to RAM with the article caching feature, and seeing as you have plenty of RAM, there's no need for that part of the process to be thrashing your hard drive.  Setup > Download #2 > Article Caching.  And there are other ways of optimizing Alt.Binz by controlling prioriities, throttling decoding speed, etc., all in Setup.

[DipDancer]

my system is fine in general, its not due to some general misconfiguration of windows.
I have 2 HDDs in my system, 1st one includes the OS (C:) and a logical partition (D:), on which all my downloads are located. my "workdrive" is G:, which is to be my complete 2nd HDD. so the problem is when decoding takes place and then at the same time par2 checking and reparing, then my 1st main disk has to read at the same time from HDD for decoding and for checking/repairing, which is the problem here. if this took place on the other HDD G:, then everything would be fine. but currently the automatic switch over to another dir/drive which can be made by altbinz only takes place at unraring, when the crucial work, which slows down the things most is already over. I also cannot just switch drives for these tasks, as I dont have that much space on my drive D: for downloaded and extracted files at the same time (before they get deleted), the big space is all on that other drive. apart from that, when I changed the download folder to that drive, I'd have the same problem again, then both processes, decoding and par2 checking/repairing would both take place on the same drive again. the aim should be that alt binz could automatically divide those processes up on 2 different drives, if desired.
its basically the same when for example playing a larger file from CDROM and then in explorer you try rightclck -> attributes on another file, then your system will also slow down significantly, because the head/laser has to be at 2 different places at the same time and here in usenet context this is additionally connected to heavy load.

I'll give that ram cache decoding a try though, maybe this might help.
edit: tried this now, gave 300mb of max chache (am downloading 200mb files) and set remove articles to 1 min (the cache should be empty again for each file). I dont know if these numbers are maybe wrong or not that efficient, but I tried unraring a file at the same time from the same disc and the decoding process was 3x faster when I paused unraring (at least you can pause unraring, while this is not possible for par2 work).

[Mystic2010]

You could try setting decoding priority to idle (optionally unrarring/parring as well)

[Hecks]

I repeat my earlier point: I've never seen slowdowns like this on my lower-spec machine.  This kind of multitasking should be perfectly manageable on a system like yours without those kinds of slowdowns - certainly nothing should be blocked from running.  I really suggest you look again at how your hard-drive is configured, how/whether it's write-caching, whether your DMA mode has been borked, whether your controllers are working OK, etc.

Others may have different advice: but my main point is that Alt.Binz shouldn't be giving you this kind of grief.

[DipDancer]

I have my discs running at native SATA mode (AHCI in bios and intel controller loaded at startup from windows). others than that I didnt make any changes in windows so other options should still be the standart ones.
from my experience this problem is actually nothing new though, its actually quite normal that when two heavily demanding read and write performances from the same HD (or CD) occur at the same time everything gets slowed down much more as when these process would have been excecuted after another. this has just always been the same all the years I had a computer before. so Im not sure in how far this can be solved with different settings.
nevertheless im willing to try out more of course, anything that might help. but as already said, since im basically running with standart options other than the SATA thing I dont really know what else I could try out.

just again, this is not a problem of alt binz itself, but 2 heavy read & write processes (decoding + par2checking/repairing/unraring), which I would like to be able to split up on drives automatically, if desired.