I like to compress the videos I take to save space in my hard drive. The compressed videos are generated in a separate folder. Then I delete the original larger videos and then move the compressed ones from the destination folder to the original one.
Of course, generating the compressed videos and — correct me if I'm mistaken (I might be — deleting the original ones counts towards the read/write that affects the hdd life cycle.
But what about just moving the files between folders? Sometimes this action is instantaneous, sometimes it takes a few seconds (5 seconds tops usually, depending on how many files I'm moving at once).
Best Answer
Moving large files around on the same partition (i.e. drive letter in Windows), which is indicated by the fast times, does not actually move the file location on disk.
Filesystems have (generally near the beginning of the disk/partition) an index of where files are and often how they appear in a tree. When you move a file within the same volume it simply updates that table. Similarly, deleting a file does not actually remove the file contents [normally], it simply forgets where the contents are located and allows other stuff to be written on that space (which is a cause of fragmentation).
The wear and tear is thus very small, and equivalent to writing a small file.