What is the bottleneck when unrar'ing files?

Kol · 18 Mar 2009 at 17:08

I wasn't sure whether to post this in cpu/hard drive/windows software... but out of interest, what is generally the main factor of speed when unrar'ing files?

Does it depend on the CPU / memory / hard drive or the software? I know each one will have it's own role to play, but which is the main factor?

Cheers,
Mike.

Werewolf · 18 Mar 2009 at 17:40

I think it depends to an extent on the size of the file, i'd guess these days it's probably the hard drive much of the time, as it still seems to write the files to a temporary folder during decompression, certainly for smaller files it'll likely be the drives.

siumatfung · 18 Mar 2009 at 17:43

would it not be a combination of the buffer size on you HDD ie cache and the clock speed & cache on the CPU i have a samsung spinpoint and [email protected] unrars files rapid!

Kennysevenfold · 18 Mar 2009 at 17:51

i say the main factors would be the HDD buffer speed and cpu clock speed

Kol · 18 Mar 2009 at 18:23

Cheers chaps! I scoured google and some people suggested it would be beneficial to use two drives, ie. compressed file on drive 1, extract file to drive 2. Though I imagine the difference would be negligible. The answers you guys have given sound about right.

Thanks/

Mattus · 18 Mar 2009 at 19:39

Kol said:
Cheers chaps! I scoured google and some people suggested it would be beneficial to use two drives, ie. compressed file on drive 1, extract file to drive 2. Though I imagine the difference would be negligible. The answers you guys have given sound about right.

I reckon that could make a big difference. With one drive, the drive has to seek between the RAR archive and the file it's writing, and it's that seeking which wastes time. With two drives, the drives could just read and write sequential data.

Kol · 18 Mar 2009 at 19:45

Hmmm, may start doing that then! Cheers.

gaara · 18 Mar 2009 at 21:58

definitely the hard drive, I put an album onto my ramdisk partition and it unrared miles faster

Uhtred · 18 Mar 2009 at 22:33

It depends on the level of compression. If you're using high or best then it will be the cpu that is the bottleneck

gaara · 18 Mar 2009 at 23:10

Zap said:
It depends on the level of compression. If you're using high or best then it will be the cpu that is the bottleneck

true, just did a test on best compression and cpu was the bottlenecked, too bad I dont have more ram, would make a more interesting test with say an 8gig file.

dtokez · 19 Mar 2009 at 01:11

Mattus said:
I reckon that could make a big difference. With one drive, the drive has to seek between the RAR archive and the file it's writing, and it's that seeking which wastes time. With two drives, the drives could just read and write sequential data.

thats got to be the biggest factor id say

postmanfw · 19 Mar 2009 at 03:42

+1 for seperate drives