Not marked as a question as it's just for education and curiosity....

1) I download all my games from GoG using Chrome. No Galaxy, no GoG Downloader. All is well. My question is, with my standard broadband, I get 4Gb in about 2 hours. Is that about average? I know some of you have stuff like "infinity" but mine isn't fibre or anything. I also know some of you live on the moon (or might as well), so you will think I am getting superfast stuff. I am content, but just wondering if it about average.

If I use Youtube, or iplayer (streaming tv stuff) I almost never get buffering so I am content, but curious.

2) On my old XP system I had a Buffalo 500Gb USB harddrive for backup stuff. I eventually figured (I know, eventually), that I could simply drag GoG installers to it for a backup. Question is, now I have a Win7 system, and it gives me a message that I won't get all the data (or something like that) when I try the same thing. Is that something to be bothered about? Or is it just metadata stuff. In other words, if I ignore the message and do it anyway, will my backed up installers work if need to drag them back and try to install them in the future?

All for now, I am sure I can think of more tomorrow....if I can remember.

Are you SURE you do not mean 4GB? That is eight times as much as 4Gb, see.

What's your broadband max speed? Use fast.com and speedtest.net to compare. Under my assumption, your real download speed from GOG is about 5 mbps.

Can you post the exact message you're getting on this one?

As to the speed, what's 'average' is going to vary pretty wildly. I can DL 4GB in just minutes, for example. But I obviously have a pretty fast connection.

At least it is not superslow, but it is impossible to say if you should be getting better download speeds, since you didn't reveal how fast your broadband connection is.

If you don't know and want to check online how fast your internet connection is, you can test it on e.g. this site:

http://www.speedtest.net/

Click on "GO", let it run, and tell us what you get for "ping", "download" and "upload". Download is the important one here, how fast you can receive stuff from the internets at max.

Your usb drive is most likely formatted in FAT32 instead of NTFS, so it misses the metadata stream. One of the metadata that's stored there is the "This file was downloaded from the internet and may not be safe", and other stuff like that. The file's contents would be the same though, as can be shown through the file's hash. So yeah, feel free to ignore it.
Let me see if I can find the full list of metadata that's stored in those streams.

I don't think that there is a definitive answer to that question. Broadband speeds vary wildly, both comparing countries and comparing individual speeds within a single country.

For example, the average internet speed in Germany was about 15 Mbit/s in Q1/2017. This means you could download 1.875 Megabyte per second, 112.5 Megabyte per minute or roughly 6.5 Gigabyte per hour. So if you're talking about downloading 4 Gigabyte in two hours, that would be fairly slow compared to the German average ( ~4.5 Mbit/s vs. 15 Mbit/s).

However, even in Germany this average is comprised of people in metropolitan areas who easily reach 50-200 Mbit/s and others especially in rural areas who don't even reach 0.7 Mbit/s. So even looking at just one country your speeds could be blindingly fast or cripplingly slow depending on your baseline.

Speed mostly depends on the connection you're buying from the ISP. For me, I'd be ecstatic with 2 hours for 4GB, while others can get that same amount of data in a much shorter time. As zlaywal says, it looks like your connection speed is around 5Mbps.

http://www.download-time.com/ is the online tool I used.

On the USB drive question, how much space is left? In Windows Explorer, right-click the USB drive, then click Properties. This will tell you how much space is used and how much is unused. Might be that you're trying to put ten pounds of rocks in a five-pound bag.

Edit: reading JMich's post, looks like I did not understand the drive question. Carry on, then. : )

Wow Guys, thanks for the speedy responses.

To Themken
I thought I was being clever when I said 4Gb, instead of 4Mb. I had no idea that Gb was different to GB. I was actually referring to the games that have, say, 3 parts to download, in which case part 2 is usually about 4 thingies in size, and takes approx 2 hours.

To zlaywal, timppu, randalator, groot, hereforthebeer (do you know how hard it is to type your name without spaces?)
On speedtest.net...Ping 18ms, D/L 5.15Mbps, U/L 0.26Mpbs
Still don't know if it's fast or slow, going by the posts here over the years, I'd still say about average.

To Jmich,
the window is titled, "PropertyLoss" and it says, "The file "setup (game name) has properties that can't be copied to the new location."

Just to show how I can be clever but still know nothing, I thought all data was 1's and 0's. I can imagine a different way of formatting a disc (ordering drawers in a file cabinet, setting sizes, proirities etrc), but it's still 1's and 0's. See? Logical and ignorant and the same time.

Yeah, that looks like what JMich postulated: your USB drive is probably formatted in FAT32. If you format in NTFS, you should have no problems. It's just a different file structure, but FAT32 has limitations on file sizes and (if I recall correctly) file names as well.

Imagine FAT32 as a cabinet drawer that has a single type of folders (plain brown ones). The contents of each folder are different, but their folders are all the same. NTFS is still a cabinet drawer, but the folders inside are different. Each person uses a specific color for their folders (I use blue, you use green, someone else uses yellow) so at a glance you can see who put that folder in the cabinet. In addition, you have different folder types (flaps, latches, smaller ones, bigger ones etc) which differentiate the type of documents a folder has (invoices, stuff to repair, contracts to renew, complaints etc)..
If you take a folder from the second cabinet and move them to the first one, the contents of the folder would remain the same, but you would lose the information you get from the folder itself.

Not sure if the above makes it easier or harder to understand what the extra properties do, and how having them (or not having them) changes a file, but feel free to ask for more info.

Oh, my word! You and me could have so much fun. That explains it perfectly.....except I wouldn't use green folders, yukky. I have this confusing theory on the size of the universe and how it can be accurately measured.....

Thanks JMitch. I wish you were my tech guy. He is good, but he's not you.

Average-ish. Worldwide average was 7.2 Mbit/s in 2017 but UK ADSL average already was about 9.4 Mbit/s in 2016 according to statista...

Yeas, like you say averageish. The thing about speeds is that the published speed is the max under lab conditions. It's the last half mile that slows things down. Even before the house it's a case of how far from the exchange. Not the NEAREST exchange, the one that supplies the signal. They all go one way. The one that supplies is a couple of miles away, the nearest is half a mile. Geigraphically, they fan out to the next exchange, then on from there to the next etc.

In the UK BT recently announced 1000 mbps or (something extravagant like that), GUARANTEED! They will give you a voucher (up to 3xyear) if it ever falls below that. Yeah, right. If it sounds too good to be true.... I have no idea of the cost because I am content with what I have. But even with surveys / studies you have to see who set them up or funded them. Then there is always the small print.

Thanks for your time though. I found this illuminating and interesting.

18ms ping time is very, very good; many an online gamer is green of envy. It may be normal for fibre but over copper not.

I just love exFAT for my USB memory sticks. I cannot understand that FAT32 is still around seeing as how it hates sticks with more than 4GB.