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I need a smarter copy program
I do a lot of drive backups to a tmp drive, then after wiping the original drive and installing a new OS, I copy all the data back into a directory like c:\BACKUP. Let's just always assume it's winXP.
Problem is, sometimes I get a lot of "access denied" messages when doing the copy using windows explorer. The message doesn't give a full path (making it hard to find the problem file), and the biggest pain is, it stops the copy process cold. So I have to subdivide and recopy and narrow down till I get it copied, or do searches for the problem file(s). Usually the problem files don't usually need to be copied, but I am FORCED to find the problem in order to skip copying it, in order to get the rest of the data...whew!
I need a smart copy program that will (1) continue the 'copy' process past the files that won't copy, and (2) when finished, either give a message or write to a log file which files/directories could not be copied if any. OR, I need a program that will set or clear whatever bit is causing "access denied" on all files on the drive, so I can then copy it without problems.
Is there any such progam? I hit this problem constantly and am not sure what's the solution. Thanks!
Problem is, sometimes I get a lot of "access denied" messages when doing the copy using windows explorer. The message doesn't give a full path (making it hard to find the problem file), and the biggest pain is, it stops the copy process cold. So I have to subdivide and recopy and narrow down till I get it copied, or do searches for the problem file(s). Usually the problem files don't usually need to be copied, but I am FORCED to find the problem in order to skip copying it, in order to get the rest of the data...whew!
I need a smart copy program that will (1) continue the 'copy' process past the files that won't copy, and (2) when finished, either give a message or write to a log file which files/directories could not be copied if any. OR, I need a program that will set or clear whatever bit is causing "access denied" on all files on the drive, so I can then copy it without problems.
Is there any such progam? I hit this problem constantly and am not sure what's the solution. Thanks!
ASKER
Robocopy has potential for solving the problem, but, I am not seeing an explicit switch for "continuing even after errors", unless this:
/ZB :: use restartable mode; if access denied use Backup mode.
does it. What is backup mode? What I do see is that it continues to RETRY failed copies, but, nothing seems to indicate it will skip failures and go on. I also see the logging switches, but, I was hoping to get a list of all failures at the end, not one at a time...
Do you have experience with it so you can advise? If not I'll just go for it, but am leary of the "delete from source" potential. I cannot lose the source! I appreciate this.. Thanks Agaiin!
/ZB :: use restartable mode; if access denied use Backup mode.
does it. What is backup mode? What I do see is that it continues to RETRY failed copies, but, nothing seems to indicate it will skip failures and go on. I also see the logging switches, but, I was hoping to get a list of all failures at the end, not one at a time...
Do you have experience with it so you can advise? If not I'll just go for it, but am leary of the "delete from source" potential. I cannot lose the source! I appreciate this.. Thanks Agaiin!
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XCOPY has such a switch. Personally, if you're doing a backup, I'd use the Windows XP Backup program and backup to a file. You don't miss anything (and you check the log files to confirm it got everything).
ASKER
Is this logging overkill:
robocopy source dest /r:1 /E /V /W:1 /TEE /V /LOG:c:\robo_log.txt
Maybe /V does it all? I just don't want to use conflicting log switches, but also don't want to lose data output. I like /TEE so I see what's going on. After this I'll leave you alone and give you the points, you rock!
robocopy source dest /r:1 /E /V /W:1 /TEE /V /LOG:c:\robo_log.txt
Maybe /V does it all? I just don't want to use conflicting log switches, but also don't want to lose data output. I like /TEE so I see what's going on. After this I'll leave you alone and give you the points, you rock!
ASKER
I went with it and it works great!
Glad I could help :-)
Sounds like you need Robocopy from the WIndows resource kit.
You can find out more about this at http://www.ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html
It's a command-line utility, that can recursively copy files, understands security permissions and can continue even after errors.