What's the best way to clone a 2TB disk?

[swee'pea99]

Windows 10 seems to copy files simultaneously, which sounds like trouble to me when you're talking hundreds of large files. A friend recommended Teracopy, and that seemed to be going pretty well until suddenly...it wasn't. Just ground to a halt and sat there sulking. Any tips, tricks and free program recommendations appreciated.

 

[MossCommuter]

Have a Google for Clonezilla

 

[fossyant]

MiniTool Partition Wizard - it does the cloning in a jiffy and it's free. Used it 4 times when moving various computers over to SSD.

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks...but I'm wondering if I may have misled by trying to use language I'm not entirely familiar with. Basically I want to copy 700-odd movie files - mostly MP4 or avi - from one big drive to another. Would one or other of these tools be the best option for this task?

 

[ColinJ]

'Sounds like trouble' ... Did you try a straightforward copy and actually have trouble with it, or did the fear of trouble put you off trying?

 

[marknotgeorge]

There's a free Microsoft tool called SyncToy that sounds ideal for the task. I've used it for similar tasks - moving music and video files around, and it works well.

 

[swee'pea99]

'Sounds like trouble' ... Did you try a straightforward copy and actually have trouble with it, or did the fear of trouble put you off trying?

I'm still waiting for disk#2 to arrive, but yes, I've found in the past that copying a then b is quicker & more straightforward than copying a & b together. Things may have moved on, but last time I tried it on lots of files my PC got very grumpy.

There's a free Microsoft tool called SyncToy that sounds ideal for the task. I've used it for similar tasks - moving music and video files around, and it works well.

That sounds perfect - thanks!

 

[psmiffy]

There's a free Microsoft tool called SyncToy

Does this work with W10 - website says W98 = most recent?

 

[swee'pea99]

Does this work with W10 - website says W98 = most recent?

Googling suggests yes:

 

[Deleted member 26715]

Take both drives out of Windoze machine connect them to a Linux machine go to command prompt type in
cp /media/disk1/*.* /media/disk2/. #confirm paths
Go make a cup of tea, come back disconnect drives & put them back in Windoze machine

 

[LonesomeWanderer]

From a command prompt:
robocopy /s c:\ d:\
Where c: is the source drive letter and d: is the destination drive (will only copy new and changed files)

 

[LetMeEatCake]

Another option (if you're happy using the command prompt) is robocopy (Windows Robust File Copy). It comes with Windows so should already be installed. Example usage - open command prompt and enter the following:

robocopy E:\ F:\ /E​

That copies drive E: to drive F: and includes all subfolders (/E). It's clever enough to skip files it's already copied, so you can use it to keep the target drive up to date too. There's loads of options for fine-tuning its behaviour too if you want to geek out - robocopy /? to see the full list.
(oops - simultaneous posting with LonesomeWanderer)

 

[swee'pea99]

Like the sound o' that there robocopy! Might give that a whirl.

 

[swee'pea99]

Having said which, assuming my source is G and my destination H, would this be:

robocopy G:\ H:\ /G

or should it be

robocopy /s G:\ H:\ /G

and either way, am I right in thinking the end bit's

H:\[space]/G

?

 

[LonesomeWanderer]

If you want to include empty subdirectories as well:
robocopy g:\ h:\ /e
If you don't want empty subdirectories:
robocopy g:\ h:\ /s