How to copy NTFS disk???

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brutalizer

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 23, 2010
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I am trying to copy an NTFS disk to another NTFS disk. So I have tried to copy all data via Linux file managers but that failed ("hardlinks not copied, filesystem full", etc etc). Then I tried to copy all data via Windows7 file managers, but that is problematic too as the copy procedure interrupts half way because of different problems. This really pisses me off, as I spent two days with this piece of garbage. After interruption, I must identify which files were not copied and copy them again. And then I need to compare directory sizes to make sure everything was copied, and no missing files, etc etc. This is ridiculous.

So, how do you copy an entire NTFS disk to another??? Directory by directory? File by file? Is there any software that copies lot of directories to another disk - without interrupting and you can trust everything was copied correctly?? Gahhh!

PS. I am not trying to clone the disk. I am trying to copy everything to another disk.
 
filebased: Windows robust copy/ robocopy, started as admin or
Clonezilla (a small Linux that you can boot via USB and that does a 1:1 disk clone or partition copy)
 
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Thanks for your help guys! I have now tried Teracopy but have new problems. When I copy, the USB disks go into sleep mode or something, so the copy is interrupted. Teracopy says something about "disk is offline, waiting". Any suggestions how to copy a disk to another disk? I dont get it, how can this be so difficult? Windows crap.

Maybe file-by-file copy is too a difficult task for Windows. Is it possible to copy the entire disk to another disk? I want to copy the disk to a folder within another larger disk.
 
brutalizer said:
Thanks for your help guys! I have now tried Teracopy but have new problems. When I copy, the USB disks go into sleep mode or something, so the copy is interrupted. Teracopy says something about "disk is offline, waiting". Any suggestions how to copy a disk to another disk? I dont get it, how can this be so difficult? Windows crap.

Maybe file-by-file copy is too a difficult task for Windows. Is it possible to copy the entire disk to another disk? I want to copy the disk to a folder within another larger disk.
Click to expand...

maybe your settings or use one of these free apps?: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/prevent-hard-drive-going-sleep-windows
 
can you take the drive out of the enclosure and plug it into the computer directly?
 
Teracopy had some problems. It hang (maybe when the disk went to sleep mode?) and did not work well. I have now tried Total Commander, and it copied everything without hanging. But I dont know if it copied everything correctly. Dang. This seems to be a too difficult task for windows. You need special software to copy lot of files.

So the final solution I chose was Total Commander run as Admin (otherwise it will not read other user's data). This was better than copying files in Linux using Nautilus or Gnome Commander or Rsync. It also did not work to use file explorer to copy files in Windows7, nor Teracopy.
 
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One word of warning about robocopy. If you're copying an entire Windows drive, you'd better use the "exclude junction points" option (/XJ), otherwise it will get caught in a recursive loop.
 
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