Why Are Progress Bars Wrong So Often?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
979 words · ~4 min read
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thanks for watching techwiki click the subscribe button then enable
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notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos
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5 minutes 3 hours
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20 seconds well if you've ever installed a program
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updated your os or moved files from one location to another you've probably seen
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how the estimated time remaining can jump around wildly sometimes to the
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point where you feel like Windows is just guessing like someone at the roulette
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wheel and perhaps even more perplexing is the fact that this has been an issue
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for 3 10
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30 years well you know what a really long time
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since at least Windows 95 and it hasn't seemed to have gotten better at all i
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mean we have cortana learning anything about our lives but Windows somehow
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isn't smart enough to tell us when the file transfer will be done what gives
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well as it turns out that progress bar is only given a limited amount of
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information to work with when you're trying to copy files it knows how many
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files are being moved around and how much data there is overall which at
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first glance might seem like enough to give an accurate reading given that you
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think that Windows would also know how fast your computer's hardware is
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but the reality is that your system's throughput can vary significantly over
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time for example if your file transfer has been going for a minute but suddenly
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a different process also starts hitting your disk with lots of data say Windows
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grabbing some unscheduled automatic updates or steam downloading some hot
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fresh overpriced dlc well when that happens your transfer
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speed will go down but the progress bar had no way of anticipating that so that
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estimate it gave you to start off with is now way off especially since it's
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common to see spikes at first when the data hits your drive's high speed cache
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then a sharp drop off after the data gets transferred to the main part of the
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disk now this obviously doesn't account for all situations but even if you ensure
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that you don't have much else going on in the background your speeds could
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still take a hit if whatever you're trying to move is split up into pieces
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all over your drive whether you're working with large files which have
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become heavily fragmented or just lots of smaller ones
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this causes your hard drive or SSD to have to spend more time looking around
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for all those small bits of data and again the progress bar doesn't know if
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the remaining files are scattered all over the place so it doesn't know how
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long seek times will be let's say though that you're installing a program instead
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of just copying files why aren't the estimates you get from your installer
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program much better well they too suffer from a similar
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inability to anticipate in that they often work off of a checklist of things
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they have to do to get the program completely installed and some of these
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things take far longer than others like decompressing several gigabytes of
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high-res textures if you're installing a video game versus changing a small
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handful of registry entries but many installers treat these tasks merely as
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two things on a longer list that will add a certain percentage complete to the
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bar when they're done instead of actively thinking about how long each
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task will take well hold on a minute john that last one just sounded like
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excuse making so why can't we just make progress tracker smarter well we could
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but to do so would require more complex coding and algorithms to keep track of
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all these different variables that affect throughput and that still doesn't
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solve the problem of not always being able to anticipate changes in speed
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caused by other things your system is doing and although there are third-party
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file transfer programs out there that are better at giving realistic estimates
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spending tons of time trying to optimize an installation progress bar just isn't
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a priority for many developers compared to polishing up the user interface
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security or stability of their software you know the stuff that can profoundly
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affect your user experience so next time your computer gets stuck at
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75 or whatever remember that unless it's actually frozen the devs have probably
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just stuck to the old dodge of a watch pot never boils and use the time to go
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do something more productive than stare at your screen like watching techwiki
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