> Just reread your message in the cold light of dawn and I may have
> misunderstood.
>
> Moving files from one dir to another on the same drive is fast because
> the data isnt moved, just the directory entry gets tweaked. However,
> SAMBA is still in the way (since you are doing it over the network) and
> moving loads of small files will be slow as a result (my comment about
> anti-virus still applies).
>
> Moving files across the network using graft involves copying the data -
> over and above this SAMBA still gets in the way of any file
> creation/access right setup/... I find moving lots of small files across
> the network is not fast.
>
> It's interesting that doing the same bewteen two windoze boxes is a lot
> faster - shows the overhead imposed by SAMBA.
>
> I wish there were an easy way to mount an nfs file system under Windoze
> - it would make life a lot easier.


Exactly the issue. You got it right.

Moving files on same volume is basically a rename operation. It takes, whatever the size of the file, between 0.2 and 4 seconds to perform on MyBook unit, depending of network and unit loads, but the greater the number of files, the slower the operation. For few files, this delay is acceptable, but for a larger number of files, this is inconvenience.

On the other hand, Grafting can occasionnaly suffers similar delay, but is usually very fast. It is therefore faster to graft, let's say, three dozens subdirectories by hand (Alt-G x 36 times) than Alt-Moving the 400 files below. I can live with that, even if it is far from perfect.

Another inconvenient of MyBook unit is that each share folder is a volume, even if there is only one single partition. Moving file from one volume to another (each one being mapped as different letter) is therefore a copy operation, even much slower. This can be anoying.

Despite these limitations however, I still find useful to have a small silent box acting as a full-fledge server. I also discovered that you can hack the unit to install some Linux applications to extend its functionnality. As I said, it's a small computer with a huge hard disk.

What would be best is the same unit, but Windows/NTFS native. That would be awesome and much much faster. It would cost more than the 200$ I paid however...