Copy over Ethernet:Robocopy, Xcopy? 32bit or 64bit?

[Geek-9pm]

I wan to copy a large amount of data from one PC to another.
What i s the best tool?
I was thinning using Robocopy on Windows 10 64 bit from the target PC
Should the copy program be resident the hos tor the target?

Thanks

[DaveLembke]

Stuff like this, I generally just copy/paste through Windows. I set up a share on one PC that the other can access. Then I select and copy/paste what I want from one to the other and let it transfer the data. When i am done I select all contents of the destination and look at properties and verify that the properties of the data at the destination is the same file and folder count and uses the same amount of data for storage.

From command line though a mapped drive in the past if you want it to be at a command shell vs a windows copy/paste, I have used xcopy with the /v switch which verifies file size between source and destination. But I also use /s/d/y/h so I get the latest date/time stamp file so if there is an older file of same size, the newer file overwrites it if for example this isnt the first copy ever but an update to the destination from the source as well as any hidden data also transfers.

As far as 32 and 64 bit ... I dont see the importance of this. packets are a fixed size so there wouldnt be a speed advantage to a 32 bit or 64 bit OS for data transfer. Pretty much just the computers themselves and network connection speed and what drives are in them determines how fast the transfer is, such as a older computer could have the hard drive as a bottleneck to speed on a gigabit network share etc. Whereas a SSD will send data over the network faster than a slow mechanical hard drive.

This will be better than using a USB 2.0 external drive to transfer data between them by going over a 100mbps or 1000mbps network.

[Geek-9pm]

Somewhere I read that the copy and paste might not be a good thing for a large set of things.  For one, it is hard to select a large number if directors mad not make a mistake. The might be some limit as to how many things can copy in one swoop, but I don't know, there does not seem to be any limit published.

Amway, I tried to copy and paste and did it wrong and stuff got mixed up badly. The contents of something ended inside the directory of some other thing.

So I have tried Robocopy and got an error message. Then  I found that the command things has to be run as administrator.

Somewhere I read that the copy and paste is faster. Is that true? 

[DaveLembke]

I've been told that copy/paste from one computer to another over network is faster than via command shell xcopy or robocopy because of how Windows Indexing Service has a map of where all data is and xcopy and robocopy uses discovery methods which are slower.

*Note: I have never done a speed test to see how long it takes to copy via copy/paste or xcopy or robocopy to see if there is any noticeable difference. I have a 100mbps network and its plenty fast.

About a month ago I was transferring 460GB of my Steam Client games from one computer to another vs having to redownload all the games and it took quite a while. I started the copy at 5pm and it was still transferring at midnight, and when i woke up the next day it was done. I just left the computers running and it did the copy successfully. If I needed the data transferred even faster I could have connected the hard drive of the one computer to the other internally over SATA II 300MBps connection and according to calculator 25 minutes to transfer. http://www.calctool.org/CALC/prof/computing/transfer_time

*Using that calculator my 460GB at 100Mbps connection took around 10 hours.

[Geek-9pm]

Thanks, It looks like I can not use ROBOCOPY  or anything to copy over Ethernet,
 I am going to just copy from a portable hard drive instead.
As you noted, it takes only a matter of minutes to copy from a hard drive, not several hours. One might guess that the security stuff gets in the way. 
I will come back when I get it done. Took only a short time to prepare a backup hard drive just now. Like 25 minuets  or so.
Right now I am waiting to get a fresh copy of Maximum Reflect the 64 bit machine.
OK, it is now ready. Be back in a bit.

EDIT: Took awhile. Maximum can not do a restore while window is running n. So I had to make the 64 bit PE DVD for the Windows 10. Once I got over that, tghe rest was easy. You have to boot from the rescue CD/DVD  to restore any partitions, even partitions that applier to only contain data. 

But i wonder, how to people use ROBOCOPY when there is no other feasible choice?
Well, there are some things that will always be a mystery.   

[Salmon Trout]

I don't see why you can't use Robocopy, Xcopy, or (for that matter) Teracopy over ethernet. I have a multimedia collection that is currently 160 GB in size, stored on a 3 TB external drive (USB 3) and I backed it up to a folder on my 2 TB NAS in about 1 hour 15 minutes. I also have a picture collection that is 26 GB in size and this is on an internal SATA 3 drive. This backed up to the NAS in about 15 minutes. The LAN is gigabit ethernet but the practical speed seems to be about 300 - 400 Mbit/sec. Once they are backed up you only need to copy new/changed fies which is easy to arrange.

[Geek-9pm]

Something went wrong and I could not understand it.
Some kind of 'you do not have permission' thing.

Later, I did use ROBOCOPY to  to copy files from an external hard drive. But over my local Ethernet connection things go bad.
I am able to just copy and paste a directory over my Ethernet. But anything to big or complicated is just too much for my limited attention span.

Before I started using Windows 10, I just copy any way I wanted.
 But the new security rules in Windows 10just leave  me in the dust.
Windows 10 makes me walk to town. 

[Geek-9pm]

Oh, I did find more stuff about ROBOCOPY.
 
RASHCNETO

Found in ROBOCOPY documentation the word RASHCNETO, which is
not really a word. Instead, it measn one or more of the
letters given can be used as qujlifieres to to modify an
option in a ROBOCPY command.
   
Two options taht use qualifiers are:

/ia:   Includes only files with specified attributes
/xa:   Excludes any files with specified attributes

The RASHCNETO refers to the following attributes.
 R – Read only
 A – Archive
 S – System
 H – Hidden
 C – Compressed
 N – Not content indexed
 E – Encrypted
 T – Temporary
 O - Offline

Example: Copy all files on drive K: to drive E: and exclude  any files with the hidden attribute.
ROBOCOPY D: F: /xa:H

Notice that the letter S is here used to mean system.
 In another place that letter S means sub directories.

So this is proper:
ROBOCOPY D: F: /xa:H /S

Now it copies all the directorates and excludes hidden file

(Some commands only apply to specific versions of Windows.)
Source:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-R2-and-2012/cc733145(v=ws.11)
Link does not work 

[patio]

I'm confused...

Are you saying you used the "RASHCNETO " command ? ?...if so why ?

If i was copying/moving that much data i would simply use a disk imageing app and be done by now.

[Geek-9pm]

I have trouble using ROBOCOY over local Ethernet network.
I can use XCOPY.
But I read that ROBOCOPY was in some way better.

I found that there is an option for exclusion of same files.So there t is where I found  RASHCNETO

In Windows 7 I set my remote drive to Z: and then I tried:

Code: [Select]

ROBOCOPY Z: E: /xa:HBut that did not permission issue.
Therefor I can not use ROBOCOY  over my Ethernet.
Somehow I can not get the right permission using windows 7 64 bit.
My Windows 7 is the pro 64 bit  home version. I think.
This might be the issue:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-nz/help/2639043/a-robocopy-command-updates-dacls-incorrectly-in-windows-7-or-in-window

Assume that you use the following robocopy command to perform file replication on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2:
robocopy <Source> <Destination> /sec /mir
However, the Discretionary Access Control Lists (DACLs) for the files are updated incorrectly. This issue occurs even if the DACLs in the source location and in the destination location are the same.

But I don't understand this.   

[nil]

You might want to check out an open source program called DeltaCopy -

http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp

Although I just use rsync. WSL enabled and installed on both machines, openssh-server installed on one.

Fall Creator's Update has an openssh server as an optional component, but I haven't used it myself.

[Geek-9pm]

nil, Thanks for the link.

My old machine is a Dell 755 with either XP or Windows 10. Both 32 bit.
 It is set up as a triple boot. Ubuntu is the other OS.

The machine giving g trouble is a Gateway running Windows 10 Home 64 bit. O Windows 7 64 bit. It is a dual boot.

Rather than remove the hard drive and populate it directly from my other computer, I thought I would just do it over the local network. There are three PCs and some home devices on this network. My security needs are very low.

For some reason ROBOCOPY can not get permission to copy files from my Dell computer. The is with either Windows 10 or Windows 7. (Both 64 bit. Can that make any difference over the network?)

Right now I am doing the transfer of my personal data using XCOPY. It seems that only ROPBOCOPY has some kind of issue.

I will look at the link you gave. 

[nil]

Side note -- If you have Ubuntu running on both machines, another alternative is mounting the Windows volume(s) in Ubuntu, and using rsync to transfer them to the client Ubuntu machine.

All you need is openssh-server running on the host (sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install openssh-server). rsync should already be installed.

Linux can natively read and write NTFS so mounting your Windows partition in Linux should be no problem.

[patio]

Tried TeraCopy yet ? ?

[Geek-9pm]

I have no doubt other programs work. XCOPY does the job.
But ROBOCOPY has me baffled.   

Is anybody here an expert on ROBOCOPY over Ethernet on a home system?

I can see files on the other PC over my local network and do simple transfers by mapping a network drive.  (I use Z: as the drive letter.)

But ROBOCOPY chokes and dies. It will only work on drives directly connected.
It just cannot do a transfer over my local network.
Lets say the other PC I want is
\\DELL\BIGG\
.. which I can map as drive Z:
now if I  do this:
start command prompt,  go over to drive H:
...then I type:
ROBOCOPY   /?
... and it shows me the options. So next I type
ROBOCOPY Z: H: /MIR
... but is stalls on a file named RECYCLE.BIN
... which I do not see on the source computer.
after 30 seconds it tries argon, and again until I hit the break key.


Any ideas or workarounds? 
Could RECYCLE.BIN be malware?
(Both machines are running recent builds of Windows 10.)

[patio]

I have no doubt other programs work. XCOPY does the job.
But ROBOCOPY has me baffled.   

So if it works are you just bein stubborn ? ?

[BC_Programmer]

The "File" is $RECYCLE.BIN and it is a folder. You can either exclude it with the /xd switch, or you can use /r:0 to set the retry count to 0 so it will continue to the next file if errors occur.

[nil]

Check out the /XD option which allows you to specifically exclude/skip over directories such as RECYCLE.BIN.

Good example on this page:

https://christ-offer.blogspot.com/2011/01/simple-backups-with-robocopy.html

It looks like you can just specify a series of quoted directory names and they will be excluded.

[Geek-9pm]

Thank you both. Got it to work!
Some other details. I set both PCs to use the same user name, which is a MS account. An both require password to log in and to let the network share.

An rather than use the drive map, I use the full share name of the other PC.
Share name is: \\Dell\Data$
Rather than block out the file giving me trouble, I used the wait and retry  options thus I see what is going on.
I want the network drive to be copied to y local E: drive and I did this:
ROBOCOPY \\Dell\Data$ E: /w:3 /r:1 /s
it waits 3 seconds on a problem and ttys one more time. It snags some system files, but keep on going. and gets all the stuff I want.

The mystery is why would it try a system or hidden file or folder? Some types of system things in Windows should not be transported over a network. You would think  Microsoft would have a default setting that would not transport information not relevant to drive content. Maybe there is a reason.

Anyway, now I can use ROBOCOPY to make a backup over the network rather than taking a portable external drive from one PC to another. 

Thanks everybody.

[Geek-9pm]

My bad. 

The  RASHCNETO thing in ROBOCOPY ...
 - is one to a customer.
You can not go piggyback.   

I tried
ROBOCOPY Z: E: /XA:RSH /S 
.. which is wrong.   
(I want to exclude read only , system and hidden and do subdirectories.)
It hasto be
ROBOCOPY Z: E: /XA:R /XA:S /XA:H /S 
Is that right?