This review is Done by our Forum Member Corker. We thank him for doing this excellent review.

Greetings, Avinashtech Readers! Today we have another giveaway for you. 10 licenses for ExtremeCopy Pro are on the table for ten lucky people to bring them home. But let’s not rush in, shall we? Spare your moment to read the following notes before joining the raffle.

Reviewing ExtremeCopy reminds me of some people saying that waiting is the most boring action in the world. Waiting is a term unavoidably associated to something that goes slowly. No, wait! (See what I mean, I just used this word to prevent you from thinking forward) Waiting is not an action. An action requires active movement from us while waiting asks us to sit still and tight instead. In computing world nowadays where demand for speed and acceleration increases geometrically, slowing whatsoever is nearly absurd. Even so, there are few things which still have not developed a lot and copying files is just one example of them. Copying relatively large files in Windows PC could take some time and we can only wait till it is over. Playing music during waiting does not ease the job but makes things worse instead as system resources will be divided to accommodate both.

Much to our delight, third-party developers have created file copier tool to help us manage our copy task and cut off the waiting time. Just like download manager, a file copier fastens, resumes and queues copy task. Fastening copy process is achieved by creating virtual area in memory called “buffer”. The larger the buffer size, the greater the speed generated. There are many file copier on the market, either it is free or paid. ExtremeCopy falls into both because Easersoft has developed it in two edition, Standard and Pro. ExtremeCopy Pro, of course, is the paidware with several upsides and the one we are going to outline here.

This is ExtremeCopy Pro main interface.

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It is very minimalistic, don’t you agree? Note that ExtremeCopy Standard has no so-called interface which impacts to copy via context menu imposition and in turn, no access to several advanced features gained upon interface (ExtremeCopy Standard is available as portable application, however).

We have two ways to run copy task. If we choose to start from the interface, it might be less practical but in other hand this offers advantages, e.g. filter to perform copy files of a source folder by extension and preset of commands that can be exported or imported for later use. These commands determine what action will be taken if by chance there are any errors or same file names met during copy process.

Another way which is more casual is via context menu. We’d better open the Configuration menu beforehand through which we can opt for Simple or Normal interface. Selecting Simple interface will hide the dialog when an operation is being executed. We are free to run ExtremeCopy alongside Windows default copier or as Explorer’s default copier that will override Windows copier when copying every files within Windows Explorer. In exchange for this, we get new entry within our context menu, Extreme Paste or Windows Paste, parallel to the mode we have chosen.

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 Either way we choose, be it from interface or context menu, we can optionally verify the integrity of the file we copied. I am not sure what method is ExtremeCopy using to verify files though. The developer did not answer when I asked him but it is likely CRC32. But no need for keen assumption either since except we are copying files over Network drive, in most cases verification is unnecessary.

But enough with talks. Let’s take a look at how fast ExtremeCopy actually is since speed is what really matters here. I was curious upon reading Easersoft claim that ExtremeCopy is capable of providing 20%-120% speed than Windows default copier has to offer.

I have conducted a small experiment involving ExtremeCopy, XYcopy (default copier of XYplorer, file manager that I use) and Windows default copier. I copied a folder of 5,5 GB size and after triplicating the experiment, it came up an interesting data. ExtremeCopy worked like a charm by acquiring average time 2’48” minutes while Explorer and XYcopy, to my surprise, scored almost identical time 4’46” and 4’45” minutes respectively. I say it was interesting despite the result should have been obvious hypothetically, I felt there was something tricky underneath.

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Like I have written above, the larger the buffer size, the greater the speed generated. ExtremeCopy’s buffer ranges from 2 MB to 32 MB size. This value can be adjusted anytime from Configuration menu but by default 32 MB and so was at that time. Windows and XYcopy in other hand, do not offer adjustable buffer option to begin with. The absence of buffer causes transfer rate to decrease from time to time. This is contradicting ExtremeCopy whose buffer enables ExtremeCopy to hold up the high transfer rate so that copy process will be finished faster. Running another experiment in which buffer size was reduced into a half has produced significant degradation of transfer rate.

Thus, based on the experiment, I think transfer speed comparison between ExtremeCopy and Windows copier is rather unfair and manipulated. Until Windows is equipped with similar buffer feature (which is unlikely to happen), ExtremeCopy will always overlap Windows copier. This may apply to other file copier in general. But for sure this upper hand is the essence of file copier existence otherwise users’ need for file copier will be vanished.

Also, you might feel your PC is “hang” for awhile when a file copier is on the road but it is quite normal due to diversion in memory utilization. With nowadays amount of RAM which reaches up to Gigabytes, it should be no problem.

Conclusion

Unless you are in haste or copy large files frequently, perhaps your need for task copier will always be minimum. But in spite of its looks, ExtremeCopy is still a decent file copier with large buffer which lives up ExtremeCopy to its speedy claim. So, do not wait for long but gain full benefit of ExtremeCopy now.

You can download both ExtremeCopy Standard or Pro trial from this page. Now before I forgot to tell you, the current ExtremeCopy 2.0.5 does not support file queue yet but it will have been featured from the upcoming ExtremeCopy 2.1.0 release onwards.

Giveaway

Thanks to Easersoft, we are giving away 10 license keys of ExtremeCopy Pro to readers of Avinashtech. Just follow the simple rules below to enter in this draw.

  1. Subscribe to Avinashtech by entering your email address in the subscribe box on right sidebar of the blog or by clicking this link. Do remember to verify your email address when you get the verification email from Feedburner.
  2. Like the Facebook Fan Page of Avinashtech (If you don’t have a Facebook account you can skip this).
  3. Tell us using comments, why you would like to have a license for this application.
  4. Share this on Twitter, Facebook. (If you have an account there).