Maximum PC

Astonishing that Microsoft hasn't buffed Windows Explorer, given it's ability to fail in a major way. Even in Windows 7, it continues to let me down.

I was copying 500 GB from one hard drive to another. It takes hours. Somewhere near the very end, Explorer found some files that apparently, with all the long-winded folders and sub-folders, had files names too long to copy to the new drive. It reported the name of one of the sub-folders containing the files, but nothing more. I had no idea what files it was having trouble with.

I used Search to find what I thought were the offending files; only one thing came back with the particular name Explorer reported as the problem. But those files were, in fact, already on the new hard drive! Worse, there was indeed a disparity between how many files were in the source and destination. I had no idea what failed to copy. I still don't know.

When Explorer fails to copy or move a few files from a batch, it doesn't offer very many options as to how to handle the situation. It doesn't even tell you what files aren't working, as far as I can tell. I need the file names and the full path to them.

I believe there are third-party solutions for this problem, but I wanted to know if I'm missing something. Are there any hidden settings or options I'm missing? I still need to copy that data, but I do not want to waste hours doing it again.

Thanks for any help!

Part of me wants to be an ass and say: if it's a long file path issue, use shorter path names.

And which copy method were you using? Because if you're using cmd, I suggest you try robocopy (yes, there's a tool in Windows called robocopy, for robust copy) if you weren't. It's a bit better on details.

I prefer to use Teracopy because it works faster and gives you options when it doesn't work. it will also tell you exactly what didn't make it and what did -- just look for the red circle with a white x in it in the list of all the things to be copied. The ones marked with the x are the ones that didn't copy.

Teracopy is also free and integrates with Windows Explorer. There's also a GUI, which most people are more comfortable using.

If you are at home in cmd, robocopy is a good idea; though I don't think it has the error reporting Teracopy has.

It does, I've used it a few times. Though the problem is you'll miss it because it scrolled off screen.

I'll give Teracopy a try. When files fail to copy or move, I need to know which ones and why.

Nothing /p won't fix

I'm old enough to have spent plenty of time with the DOS prompt, but I've never heard of Robocopy. I'll Google that.

I know MaxPC had an article about a program that does exactly this, and not too long ago.

When you're copying tens of thousands of files within hundreds of folders, you wouldn't want to scroll through a list that long, looking for little red X's. A report of some kind, listing files that did not copy, along with full path names, would be best. You would be need to see this report while you fix problems manually.

With Robocopy, you have to scroll through a long list of white text, only some of it errors.
I don't know if Teracopy can be configured to output a log. I'll go find out.