Windows 10 file copy weirdness??

caorach

Well-Known Member
I have two USB hard disks connected to my computer on which I keep photos, I usually keep them manually mirrored by copying the same stuff onto each but sometimes they get a little out of sync and I just manually copy my pictures folder over from my "working" drive now and again so that all the new stuff I've edited etc is kept on both drives, this material will only be a few files that I've missed. I just copy the complete folder over so I don't miss anything. I also keep one disk off site and swap it for the "live" backup disk now and again, so there are actually 3 disks in the rotation but that isn't important for the problem.

However, I'm getting somewhat strange behaviour in Win 10 when it comes to copying files from one disk to another.

For simplicity let's say I have a 1TB drive and 700GB of files in my photos directory. When I try to copy my photos directory from disk 1 to disk 2 it says it can't because there isn't enough space as there is only 300GB free.

Because the copy is an overwrite (i.e. I'm overwriting the photo directory and almost all of the actual image files) then I'd have expected the 700GB of new files to take up the same space as the 700GB of files they are overwriting, plus probably less than 1GB of new material. However, it looks like Win 10 needs twice 700GB in order to copy the files over and so wants there to be 1.4TB free on the destination before it will begin the copy.

Am I missing something really obvious here or is there a way around this behaviour so that I can overwrite 700GB of files without needing 700GB of free disk space before I can start?
 
I think because the files are copied over before the old files are deleted. It is a "safety" feature. Simple answer would be to be brave and to delete the old files first but that might make you (and me) uneasy.

David.
 
I think because the files are copied over before the old files are deleted. It is a "safety" feature. Simple answer would be to be brave and to delete the old files first but that might make you (and me) uneasy.

That's what I guessed as well, but you'd think that as I believe the OS is transactional (or is journaling the correct word?) it could easily cope with deleting the files one at a time after it had written the previous one? Maybe because it is overwriting it can't do this? Even then you'd have thought that a transactionial type OS would rename the "old" file, copy over the new file and then delete the "old" file as a means of coping with files with the same name, effectively an overwrite.

I was lucky as I was able to do something similar to what you suggest and make some space for the copy but, as you say, it is far from ideal and leaves me with only 2 versions of some material at the present time until I can copy the removed stuff back.
 
Hi

Is there not a setting somewhere that you toggle to say just update/copy any new files?
I seem to recall in previous versions of Windows (pretty sure I used it for Word docs) there was such an option...

L
 
The way it is done now might just be to help that impoverished group of people the manufacturers of storage media!
 
Is there not a setting somewhere that you toggle to say just update/copy any new files?
I seem to recall in previous versions of Windows (pretty sure I used it for Word docs) there was such an option...

I can't find this in Win 10, not saying it isn't there, just that I can't find it.

What is making the process more frustrating is that when you ask it to do a copy it works its way through every single file, listing them one by one. During this time I guess it is comparing the contents of the two disks. It then asks me if I want to copy over every single file or only the ones that are different.

With there being thousands of files I tell it only to copy over the different ones, which isn't many, at which point it starts working through the same list again and i guess that it, once more, checks that each file is present on both disks and for the tiny percentage of different files it copies them over. So, once more it works its way through every single one of the thousands of files on my disk even though it only needs to copy over a few, and despite the fact that it has already done the comparison process and so knows the few that it does need to copy. With large numbers of relatively small files, such as photos, this whole thing takes for ever when it could simply be a matter of copying over a small number of relatively small files.

I know that MS are trying to make Win more and more "Apple" like and so they treat the user as if they are more, and more, stupid and give them less and less control over what actually goes on but this stuff really annoys me :) I'd guess there will be a 3rd party front end for a command line copy process that just gets on with copying the files and doesn't spend days checking things. Time for Google!
 
If its a general, rather than a particular problem there should be a few people now experiencing the same thing so I would try a windows 10 forum and see if others have solved the problem. There must be a 'capacity bit' on your remote drives that W10 cannot read or is looking in the wrong place for. 2 things to try - check your disc drives tech docs and see if there is a way to disable the 'capacity bit'; or send a query to Windows with your remote discs spec and make. Try a google, as a first attempt, X drives not overwriting with W10 op system ? worth a try.
 
I use a freeware program freefilesync to just copy the changes.

Googled to check if it will work in Win 10 and found that it has a Sync Center built in which will keep both discs synced. Save you hours.
 
I use a freeware program freefilesync to just copy the changes.

Googled to check if it will work in Win 10 and found that it has a Sync Center built in which will keep both discs synced. Save you hours.

Unfortunately sync centre can't see my USB disks but I will take a look at freefilesync as an option, thanks for the info.
 
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