Arch Linux

860lacov

Member

Registered: 2020-05-02

Posts: 497

Why copying in linux is so different compared to Windows

I use Linux for quite a long time but till now I don't understand why the files are copied this way.

example:
I have 5 video files on internal SSD. When I copy them to external SSD it takes about 5 seconds. But when I disconnect external drive (without unmounting or without sync command) the files are unreadable or there are no files on external drive.
If after copy I do sync it takes several dozens of seconds but files are on the drive.

On Windows I never used safe remove/disconnect. It was like copy file from internal drive to external drive/pedrive and remove drive from USB port. I don't remember any problem with files. All my friends use Windows. Almost none use safe disconnection.
Now I got used to do unmount/eject from file manager. I almost always do sync after copy process but I can't understand why this process seems so much worse than on Windows.

p.s.
Currently, I usually use rsync to copy files.

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,729

Re: Why copying in linux is so different compared to Windows

Windows used to use write caching by default for external drives. There were too many idiots that didn't use the safe eject, so they disabled it by default. Linux doesn't disable it by default.