Since about a week I’m running the Windows 8 Developer Preview on my business (production) laptop, because I can . Today I had to copy a large file from one share to another share on my Windows Home Server 2011 machine. Usually I open a RDP connection to the box, because (at least in Windows 7) copying via your laptop isn’t the fastest way.

Last week (when I was still running Windows 7) the average speed was about 6 Mbyte/sec., so I was totally flabbergasted when I watched the copy speeds reach 40Mbyte/sec. today. Let me explain what I did…

The infrastructure

The above pictures shows a part of my infrastructure at home. My laptop is connected to a 802.11n WiFi network and most of the time the connection is around 144Mbit.

Copying really fast….with Windows 8
I copied a large file from one share (on WHS2011) to another share (on the same WHS2011). I initiate the copy-process from my laptop’s Windows Explorer. So technically the file goes from WHS2011-Share01 –> Laptop –> WHS2011-Share02. In Windows 7 the maximum copy-speed would have a max. speed of 150Mbit.  Under normal circumstances the average speed will be around 6 MByte/sec.

But, when did the copy action on my Windows 8 D.P. laptop, the average speed was around 60 MByte/sec. If you take in consideration that this is theoretical not possible to copy a file with 60 Mbyte/sec. over a 144 MBit WiFi connection.

It seems that (at least in Windows 8 and with a filecopy from one share to another on the same server) the file isn’t really pulled through the WiFi connection, but being copied instantly at the background (locally on the server).

Slow copying from….Windows 7
I couldn’t really remember that this was also possible with Windows 7, so I copied the same file the same way, but this time from a Windows 7 laptop.

Copying at WHS2011 vs. Windows Server 8
In the previous test I copied a file which was located on my Windows Home Server 2011 machine. Just because we can, let’s execute the same type of copy action. This time we copy a binary-test-file located on my Windows Server 8 machine.

The lower speed has probably something to do with the fact that the WHS2011 machine is a physical machine and the Windows Server 8 machine is virtual….but still the 43MByte/sec is really fast through a 144Mbit WiFi connection . So if you use a Client which ‘understands’ the SMB 2.2 protocol, you can copy files really fast.

Conclusion
I really like the ‘upgraded’ version of the SMB (2.2) protocol. If you compare it to Windows 7 (SMB 2.0 if I’m correct) the new SMB 2.2 protocol already has a huge advantage if you primarily look at the speeds I achieved in my ‘simple’ copy test. At this time the fast copy speeds are only achieved if you copy files from one share to another share on the same server, at least that’s what I tested. If I copied the same file from my WHS2011 machine to the Windows Server 8 machine (using the same copy-method) the maximum speeds didn’t exceed the 3-6 MByte/sec. Don’t forget that this is just the Windows 8 Developer Preview! I’m curious if there will be any new copy-features in the BETA/RC/RTM versions!

Microsoft has a nice document where you can read some more about SMB 2.2 File Sharing Performance.