Railfan Technology > Saving/moving files

From hard drives to another hard drive. How is the best way? I did a copy to and was perusing the new hard drive and found it omitted a few files. Is this common? Is there another way to move the files?

Posted from Android

The ol' copy to/click drag is about the only way that I'm aware of short of creating a .zip file of all the files you're moving. When Windows pops up the error moving a file, just make a quick note of it and go back later to copy it again. Should work.

For those of you Windows folks, look at a handy free little tool from Microsoft called SyncToy. You can set up a pair of folders/directories (including entire drives) and have it synchronize the files between them in various modes. Works way better than copy/pasting files in Windows explorer, which - as you've found - often fails to get everything in very large copies.

Generally I set things up in "contribute" mode such that it'll copy over new files and renaming, but it won't delete anything. That way if I wipe out something and don't notice, that deletion won't get done on the backup as well. However, if you want two drives in perfect sync, there's "synchronize" and "echo" modes as well.

I use SyncToy as well. Once you set it up, it only takes a click to run it. Very handy and I use it to backup a main folder with 1.7TB of photos/video.

Posted from Android

Ryan Wilkerson
Fair Oaks, CA

I guess it depends what you are doing but in reality any program will probably use the same system tools the drag drop method uses.
There may be error checking etc but .... at the lowest level moves and copies are moves and copies.

The problem with backup type programs is you do need to read the fine print to avoid unintended consequences. As we all know from
computer systems in general they do not always do what we want. How well they work depends on how robust they are.

If you have one backup drive and want to move everything to another drive an old fashioned drag and drop of the main folder should work just fine.
Then you can look at the properties(right click on folder) of each verifying folder size, number of folders, number of files.
Of course poking around a little is always a good idea.

If you want to keep folders in synch then some program will work but..........
I never keep my backup drive(s) attached to computer as this defeats many of the reasons of a backup drive.

I would really question that a system move did not actually move files without an error/warning message, ie that you did not add files
or move files at some time inbetween.

Bob

If you're a Mac guy like me, I use ChronoSync.

Thanks for all the help!!:)

I wonder if you are tripping over "permissions";
depending on 'owner, they not be 'movable, but might be copiable.

another 'catch' comes with system generated files like thumbnails for the image folder.

as the poster suggested, it pays to start with what didn't get copied.