Alternative to Robocopy

acameron_56

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 26, 2008
Messages
289
Hey,

I have to do backups of people's hard drives often (when they want to reinstall their OS for example), and normally I would use robocopy but lately it has been acting up, so I was wondering what a good alternative would be. I'm not exactly sure what kind of technical functionality I will need, but as long as it does everything that robocopy can do, that should be fine. Basically, what I am looking for is a reliable way to safely transfer files in the fastest way possible. For simplicity, I will say that there is no budget.
And I am able to use (and have been) google :p, but I thought I would ask here as well.

Cheers
 
rsync splits the file to be sent into fixed non-overlapping chunks and only sends the parts that fail a md5 hash

rsync with -z uses Lempel–Ziv 1977 compression (gzip)

rsync with ssh uses Diffie-Hellman key exchange encryption

rsync with -y looks for a missing file that has an identical size and modified-time,
or a similarly-named file if you moved the file.

rsync with --partial will keep partially transferred files

rsync can delete extraneous files from destination

rsync can preserve owner and metadata (osX and acl support)

rsync with -S can detect and clone sparse files

rsync can send hard and soft links

there are versions of rsync that use window's vss for backing up opened files
http://www.backupassist.com/education/articles/run-rsync-on-windows.html

what is robocopy anyway?
 
When i'm rebuilding a PC i normally take an Acronis image of the drive so i can mount it later and pull whatever files i need
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy

I used it and it is very good actually. Just a little slow compared to just copying a partition. If you deal with hard drives, it will even defragment as you copy since it is copying file by file as opposed to sector by sector.

The free alternatives I use is clonezilla and Gparted.
 
I used it and it is very good actually. Just a little slow compared to just copying a partition. If you deal with hard drives, it will even defragment as you copy since it is copying file by file as opposed to sector by sector.

And that is the reason why it is much slower. I mean copying a drive/partition sequentially you will get a much higher rate then copying files that are not all in a sequential group of blocks.
 
Between robocopy, ghost8 and acronis true image all you could want to copy is done.

ghost8 for simple drive cloning even run from a PE boot cd.

acronis for cloning raid volumes or on computers with more than 4 hard drives.

robocopy for everything else. i love it! best copy tool ever. i manage my daily automated backups with it through windows scheduler. i have it set to update new or modified files and folders from one server to the other. i use a batch file to copy all the folders i want, i have it create and keep a history of logs (50 days worth). if something goes wrong like power outage etc it practically picks up where it left off. fantastic for large multi-terrabyte copy jobs internally or over a network.
Posted via Mobile Device
 
Between robocopy, ghost8 and acronis true image all you could want to copy is done.

ghost8 for simple drive cloning even run from a PE boot cd.

acronis for cloning raid volumes or on computers with more than 4 hard drives.

robocopy for everything else. i love it! best copy tool ever. i manage my daily automated backups with it through windows scheduler. i have it set to update new or modified files and folders from one server to the other. i use a batch file to copy all the folders i want, i have it create and keep a history of logs (50 days worth). if something goes wrong like power outage etc it practically picks up where it left off. fantastic for large multi-terrabyte copy jobs internally or over a network.
Posted via Mobile Device

You really should try richcopy. It blows robocopy away... It it even multithreaded.
 
OP claimed to have reliability problems with robocopy and was looking for alternatives. Not for faster/better copying. I've never compared teracopy to richcopy. Is richcopy recent? Does it work on xp? I have compared it to robocopy though and I definitely prefer teracopy. I find teracopy to be very reliable and usually faster than the default copy in XP. In my testing (a long time ago) it was no slower than robocopy or any other option at the time. It can also turn a copy into a move by selecting the copied file list and clicking delete which I find convenient. It also integrates with Total Commander iirc which I sometimes use. I have had problems getting teracopy to work in XP x64, but author claims to have that fixed now. Teracopy is the best copy handler I have tried, but I will give richcopy a try and see what I think.

I just remembered another alternative: Total Copy. It's not being developed anymore though. I used to use it before I discovered teracopy and haven't used it in years because teracopy was so much better in every way.
 
Thanks for all the replies! I decided to try teracopy and richcopy. Neither of them are working however. Richcopy will copy all the folder names and locations, but won't actually copy the files, while Teracopy starts up and then after a brief while locks up and hangs much the same way Robocopy does. Any ideas why this could be happening and how to fix it?
 
Richcopy will copy all the folder names and locations, but won't actually copy the files,

What options are you using that is strange. I have copied many TB with richcopy without issue.
 
Teracopy starts up and then after a brief while locks up and hangs much the same way Robocopy does.

Are you trying to copy from drives with unreadable sectors? Did you check the SMART on the drives with a program like CrystalDiskInfo? If so I do not think any program will help you copy the files however a program like ddrescue will allow you to make a bit for bit copy of the usable sectors to a new drive.
 
Some quick thoughts on Teracopy.

First I love and use the program.

Second it does not use the windows Disk Cache by default. You have to enable it. Not enabling it results in very slow transfers.

It gets pissed off when trying to generate hashs over a ADSL VPN.

Short of that, on less than perfect wireless connections and everywhere else I have tried its a great product. Another instance I have seen issues is where I am reading from an USB drive when the drive has errors. Teracopy will show CRC and fail those items. At least you get to see what failed. Checkdisk the drive. Reselect (Only) the files that previously failed and try again...all is well. That's a hell of a lot better than recopying the entire thing.
 
So I reinstalled Richcopy and it was working, however after 5 GB or so it stopped and hung. And just like robocopy, and teracopy I can't end the process.
 
So I reinstalled Richcopy and it was working, however after 5 GB or so it stopped and hung. And just like robocopy, and teracopy I can't end the process.

Again, I believe this is a HW problem. Remember when a hard drive (without trim) hits an unreadable sector it will try for sometimes minutes to recover that single unreadable sector. During this time the program will be unresponsive. Windows (and not the application since the application has no direct control of the hardware) will control the behavior of this and when the operation will error out. This is why all windows programs behave the same.
 
Last edited:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy

I used it and it is very good actually. Just a little slow compared to just copying a partition. If you deal with hard drives, it will even defragment as you copy since it is copying file by file as opposed to sector by sector.

While Robocopy does defragment files as it copies them, it does not defragment directories. In fact directories end up being very, very fragmented in the copy. Most file-level copying utilities probably have the same flaw. (It'd be pretty easy to get around this problem using temporary directories.)

Having said that... I have copied entire volumes using "ROBOCOPY /COPYALL /DCOPY:T /E /XJ /B source destination", volumes as large as 6 TB with about a million files. It never acted up, with the exception of the following flaws:
  • It can't copy junctions (NTFS symbolic links) while preserving their status as junctions.
  • Directories (indexes) become fragmented in the copy.
  • There is no option to do an automatic verify-by-comparison after copying.
This is Robocopy Version XP026 that I'm talking about.
 
Last edited:
Ya, everything pointed to a hardware problem so I finally got the go ahead to replace my machine, and now robocopy is running great. I wish I could have figured out the exact problem, but I believe the problem was with the windows installation. Thanks for everyone's input!
 
The problem sounds like unreadable sectors on one of the hard disks you were trying to copy. If you install and run CrystalDiskInfo and it said the drive was any other status other than good that is most likely the issue.
 
You really should try richcopy. It blows robocopy away... It it even multithreaded.

Is RichCopy a secure tool? It it stable? Is it fully compatible with Windows 7 64-bit?

Does RichCopy have a secure copying option where it checks the hash to ensure the files are copied properly? I'm looking for such a tool and I hope RichCopy is the one.
 
Is RichCopy a secure tool?
I can't answer that. I have never tried to hack it..

It it stable? Is it fully compatible with Windows 7 64-bit?

Yes and Yes.

Does RichCopy have a secure copying option where it checks the hash to ensure the files are copied properly?

You can use the verify option to make sure all copied files are the same.
 
Another vote for Richcopy. I've used it successfully to transfer terrabytes of info over the years, all verified 100%. Great program.
 
I can't answer that. I have never tried to hack it..



Yes and Yes.



You can use the verify option to make sure all copied files are the same.

How does RichCopy's verify option make sures all copied files are the same? What kind of hash checks does it employ?
 
Back
Top