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I built a faster alternative to cp and rsync — here's how it works

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Building a faster file copy tool is a practical systems programming project for developer productivity.

2026-04-06 General dev.to
I built a faster alternative to cp and rsync — here's how it works
Summary

fast-copy is a Python CLI that accelerates file copies by sorting files via OS-specific APIs (FIEMAP/fcntl/FSCTL) for sequential disk I/O, deduplicating with xxHash-128 and a SQLite cache, and streaming ~100 MB tar batches over SSH to avoid SFTP overhead, reporting 3x speedups in benchmarks.

Key Takeaways
  • Benchmark fast-copy against rsync or scp for high-volume transfers to quantify I/O improvements and deduplication savings in your environment.
Why it matters

Optimizing file transfer I/O directly reduces bottlenecks in backup and deployment workflows, which is critical for maintaining productivity in cloud or hybrid infrastructure setups common in senior engineering roles.