I’m trying to copy some files from a cd to my hard drive. I select them, choose ‘copy’ then open the folder I’m copying to, and click paste. After a few minutes it begins to copy, but never finishes. I tried it from the command line, but it was still slow (although it did actually finish a few files) Why does this happen, and how can I fix it?
Perhaps there’s something wrong with the CD, or your CD drive. I’ve never had a problem copying files from a CD, but then I always do it with the commandline. (I have never liked any of the graphical filemanagers for Linux).
I used Linux for years without seeing symptoms like this.
Do programs open slowly?
Does the PC have enough RAM?
How much RAM does the PC have?
What kernel are you running?
What speed is the processor?
I’m having this problem myself and it turns out my cd drive is dying. To check run “dmesg” in another terminal while the copy is sitting there doing nothing. If your dirve is dying there should be something about sense key error on what ever device file your cdrom is (/dev/hd<soemthing>).
I’ve had problems like this with “supermount” on Mandrake with a GUI filemanager. Like Fyrefiend said or check /var/log/dmesg for error messages from previous attempts. I prefer to manually mount CDs and use a lightweight filemanager such as “FileRunner” in X.
Try booting into another OS and doing a similar copy to see if it’s the hardware. Sometimes having the HD and the CD drive on the same cable creates problems. Look for stuff like that.
If not the hardware, then check on the drivers being used. Having the right IDE and bus drivers installed makes a huge difference, regardless of OS.