Background transfers do not do simultaneous transfers

In Options > Preferences > Background, I have Maximum number of transfers at the same time set to 5 and I checked Transfer on background by default. However, whenever I do run of the mill transfers, whether by dragging and dropping from explorer or going from the left window to the right or vice versa (and yes, I am aware that the left window is really an embedded Windows Explorer), the transfer queue never shows more than one file transferring at a time.

How may I force WinSCP to do multiple transfers by default?

I am running WinSCP 3.8.2 (build 330), and multiple simultaneous transfers works fine with SmartFTP using unsecured FTP.

The background transfers probably does not work as you expect. There is always single transfer per batch transfer.

martin wrote:

The background transfers probably does not work as you expect. There is always single transfer per batch transfer.

So it seems the program's user interface is buggy or confusing, right? That is, if in Options > Preferences > Background I can specify simultaneous transfers, but in fact this feature doesn't work when I do background transfers, is this option misplaced or incorrectly worded?

novasource wrote:

So it seems the program's user interface is buggy or confusing, right? That is, if in Options > Preferences > Background I can specify simultaneous transfers, but in fact this feature doesn't work when I do background transfers, is this option misplaced or incorrectly worded?

Well, from my point of view, it does exacly what it says. How would you word it?

Hi all,
it seems that I got the same misunderstanding of the "background"-thingy in the first place. Seems that there is a confusion between 'background transfer' and 'queues'...
Could be helpful to read the help of this feature again:
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/transfer_queue
I think what Novasource expected to happen was that if you select a folder with several files in it, all the files are transferred simultanously. But WinSCP doesn't 'resolve' the contents of the folder but it transfers one file after the other.
But if you drag 5 folders one after the other to the WinSCP window, the program creates 5 different queues.
That's something SmartFTP handles a different way by creating several queues automatically.

it seems that I got the same misunderstanding of the "background"-thingy in the first place. Seems that there is a confusion between 'background transfer' and 'queues'...
Could be helpful to read the help of this feature again:
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/transfer_queue
I think what Novasource expected to happen was that if you select a folder with several files in it, all the files are transferred simultanously. But WinSCP doesn't 'resolve' the contents of the folder but it transfers one file after the other.
But if you drag 5 folders one after the other to the WinSCP window, the program creates 5 different queues.
That's something SmartFTP handles a different way by creating several queues automatically.

That's it :-)

martin wrote:

it seems that I got the same misunderstanding of the "background"-thingy in the first place. Seems that there is a confusion between 'background transfer' and 'queues'...
Could be helpful to read the help of this feature again:
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/transfer_queue
I think what Novasource expected to happen was that if you select a folder with several files in it, all the files are transferred simultanously. But WinSCP doesn't 'resolve' the contents of the folder but it transfers one file after the other.
But if you drag 5 folders one after the other to the WinSCP window, the program creates 5 different queues.
That's something SmartFTP handles a different way by creating several queues automatically.

That's it :-)

It sure would be nice if this could be worked into your simultaneous transfer system. A lot of transfer capacity is wasted on the protocol signaling, and enabling automatic simultaneous transfers of a single batch of files sure speeds things up by more fully utilizing the pipeline.

novasource wrote:

martin wrote:

it seems that I got the same misunderstanding of the "background"-thingy in the first place. Seems that there is a confusion between 'background transfer' and 'queues'...
Could be helpful to read the help of this feature again:
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/transfer_queue
I think what Novasource expected to happen was that if you select a folder with several files in it, all the files are transferred simultanously. But WinSCP doesn't 'resolve' the contents of the folder but it transfers one file after the other.
But if you drag 5 folders one after the other to the WinSCP window, the program creates 5 different queues.
That's something SmartFTP handles a different way by creating several queues automatically.

That's it :-)

It sure would be nice if this could be worked into your simultaneous transfer system. A lot of transfer capacity is wasted on the protocol signaling, and enabling automatic simultaneous transfers of a single batch of files sure speeds things up by more fully utilizing the pipeline.

Bump, in case you didn't see this. This is an important feature for those of us who have to upload tons of small files.

novasource wrote:

Bump, in case you didn't see this. This is an important feature for those of us who have to upload tons of small files.

I have seen it :-) It is on TODO list, but it is quite complex task, so it won't be soon.

martin wrote:

novasource wrote:

Bump, in case you didn't see this. This is an important feature for those of us who have to upload tons of small files.

I have seen it :-) It is on TODO list, but it is quite complex task, so it won't be soon.

Thank you! I really appreciate this.

I would like to vote for this feature.
The behavior of WinSCP is here different from other similar SW e.g. SmartFTP.

I often have to transfer multiple files in one directory and would like to do them simultaneously.
At the moment I have to drag&drop them one-by-one - I'm using background transfers by default without confirmation so it's quite fast
but annoying. It would be better to just mark multiple files, drag&drop them to the locate directory and WinSCP is starting multiple tranfers by itself. It can't be that more difficult than the current implementation - it works when done manually, i.e. one-by-one.
Doing this for a directory might more difficult but this feature for multiple selected files would be a good start.

Thanks,
Martin

This issue is being tracked already.

Hi,

Greetings,

Can you pls let me know How we can use the feature "Maximum number of transfers at the same time" with the .net wrapper library (.DLL).

I didn't find any settings like this. It is exist in the WinSCP.exe but how to do in the .net wrapper library.

I am using the version 5.0.7 for both WinSCP.exe and .net wrapper library.

Pls reply.

Thanks
dkjain

The assembly does not support parallel transfers automatically. You need to open multiple sessions yourself.

I'm sorry but having to open each session yourself is absurd and only makes sense from the programmer's point of view. I'm transferring 2gb of files from an old server and having to go through each to micro-manage this is ridiculous.

Filezilla and other FTP clients do this out of the box, so I don't understand what reasoning you have not to do this.

Just thought I'd throw this in here. I'm going to begrudgingly switch back to using filezilla because of this.

Is this *still* not implemented?? (uploading / downloading folders using the option SET in settings for if to use multiple/simultaneous/parallel connections)


How is this possible? what is the reasoning for *just* folder transfers ignoring the "background transfers" max connection settings?

every other transfer app does not behave this way, how is this an advantage for WinSCP to behave in this way?

Is it reasonable to expect users to descend an entire folders substructure and manually drag each file over, while manually creating folders as well?

this is the difference in transfers taking 10-15 minutes on other apps, and 3-6+ hours on winSCP.

(frankly ive very rarely had winSCP even do parallel transfers, despite having the latest version and the background transfers set to 9 , from day 1)

It's implemented in WinSCP 5.10:
https://winscp.net/tracker/875

martin wrote:

It's implemented in WinSCP 5.10:
https://winscp.net/tracker/875

AWESOME! this does seem to be working now in the beta 5.10.2, thanks!

its a tiny bit slow loading up the queue (im using scp transfer), but im sure that will be improved in time, and this new feature, as is, is a great improvement to winscp! thanks!