Date:         Tue, 15 Aug 2000 21:33:23 GMT
Reply-To:     "John M. Wildenthal" <jmwildenthal@MY-DEJA.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "John M. Wildenthal" <jmwildenthal@MY-DEJA.COM>
Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy.
Subject:      Re: Routing large datasets to network drives on LAN

We, too have problems copying large SAS datasets (3-22gig).  We think
our problem is related to fragmentation since it can happen on a DATA
step that reads and writes to a local drive, and it happens when we
start running relatively low on drive space.  It also happens when
transferring files over the network when the target drive is relatively
full.  Relatively full means that the free space is less than three
times the file size.

Tricks we have tried include deleting the soon-to-be-replaced file on
the target drive and using DOS copy command via X or CALL SYSTEM.
Deleting has been of the most benefit.  Using DOS to copy tends to
leave corrupted files on the other end more often.  The advantage to
DOS is that if you SAS copy a dataset with an index, SAS rebuilds the
index from scratch on the target drive, across the network.

You do have CEDA under 8, so if you have a DOS/commandline copy routine
you trust, you might try that.  If you are transferring within an OS,
you don't even need CEDA.

We would like to try defragging the drives, but these are production
machines and the arrays range from 120-276 gig.  We can't take them
down long enough, nor tolerate the probable slowdown from online
defragging.


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