Best Way To Copy Hard Drives on Win10

abrogard · 12 Aug 2016

I have Win10 and a 2 Terabyte external drive.

I want to hang small old drives off the machine and copy their contents (200G, 100G, stuff like that) to that 2 Tera drive so's I can then wipe them and perhaps use them for other purposes.

Windows copy seems uncertain. I leave it and come back and it has stopped.

Got this Reflect thing but I'm uncertain as to whether that's (disk image) the best way to go and uncertain as to whether it will destroy all existing data on the destination disk - they fail to make that clear.

Seems to me I need a guaranteed dedicated interruptable, restartable copier that will take up where it left off.

Anyone got any ideas on the best way to go?

RolandJS · 12 Aug 2016

Macrium Reflect will only overwrite if doing a clone from source HD onto a target HD. Doing full images will not overwrite anything on the target HD. As you add one old small HD after another, you can either do a end-user choice[s] of Data folders/files image or a partition image onto the target HD.

Concerning data folders/files copying from source to target, perhaps you're trying to copy too big a chunk at once, try copying in smaller chunks. TeraCopy will also work with large quantitie of small to medium sized files.

abrogard · 12 Aug 2016

Thanks for that. Too much to ask you to explain the difference between folder/files image and partition image? I'm guessing it's the difference between copy files/folder onto an existing partition and creating a partition for them first.... ?

Which brings up the question that's been at the back of my worrying from the beginning: when you create a new partition on a Hard Drive do you have to destroy the contents of the existing partition?

RolandJS · 12 Aug 2016

Data folder/files image - an image that contains only the data folders/files hand-picked by the end-user.
One can restore such contents onto any hard-drive or usb, into any user-created partition on any hard-drive.

Partition image - an image of the entire contents of the source partition; a restore onto any target media will overwrite same-size area of any target hard-drive

When you create a new partition on a Hard Drive do you have to destroy the contents of the existing partition?
I don't have a fast answer. It depends upon several things:
-- creating a new partition into any Unallocated bytespace overwrites nothing, Unallocated means now available
-- creating a new partition onto a busy occupied hard-drive may/may not overwrite stuff residing in the space needed by new partition

I'm being distracted by outside of computer events, so I might have to fine-tune above comments later.

abrogard · 12 Aug 2016

Yep. I'm meaning that will this prog use the spare 1.5T space on my 2T drive to create partitions or whatever it wants to do/must do in order to copy my old Hard Drives? Will it use the spare space and not hurt the 'already used' space?

Steve C · 13 Aug 2016

I don't see why Windows copy should fail.Have you tried both dragging & dropping the files and using the copy command directly?

abrogard · 13 Aug 2016

Remember I"m copying whole 200G hard drives. All I know is it is so slow I go away. Come back hours later and find everything stopped.

Job supposedly finished but it is not.

Then I am unsure of where we're at. Because I don't understand the copy procedure well enough.

A directory (folder, you prefer?) appears on the destination but what sub folders are there? What files in what folders/subfolders?

If a sub folder exists does this mean all the file contents of the folder exist?

Even then I'd have to check each folder to see if they had all the sub folders.

Perhaps there's a prog to do this. An easy way. I don't know it. The best thing I know is dedicated copy progs that resume after failure.

Yes, I don't know why it fails when it does. Could be anything from meddling children to power outs.

But I would like a simpler procedure and quicker, for preference, so's I could be there all the time and monitor.

:)

RolandJS · 13 Aug 2016

abrogard said:

Yep. I'm meaning that will this prog use the spare 1.5T space on my 2T drive to create partitions or whatever it wants to do/must do in order to copy my old Hard Drives? Will it use the spare space and not hurt the 'already used' space?

Yes, it should use byte-space not actively occupied, it should not do any overwriting. MR is famous for not overwriting occupied space during the making of images files.

abrogard gave me an excellent opportunity to again mention TeraCopy. TeraCopy, if set to verbose reporting by clicking a little button called "more", will indeed give you a "readout" of every folder successfully copied, every file successfully copied, every failure will be listed also. With a little practice with its menu board, you can guarantee no overwriting, overwriting of all similar names, and so on. Again, it is best to be copying in clumps of 1GB until you are very familiar with the menu and are happy with how it operates. I have used it to "backup" my Windows XP Mode data files [23GB-worth] by copying from source directory "on C drive" into, overwriting earlier files, a target directory "on D drive."

Rocky · 13 Aug 2016

Because of my back up procedure, I regularly have to copy 2 terabyte and 3 terabyte folders from one hard drive to another. I just use drag and drop and it works wonderfully.

Rocky · 13 Aug 2016

speed - How long would it take to transfer 1TB over USB 2.0? - Super User