TeraCopy

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Has anyone here ever heard of TeraCopy? If you have, I’d be interested to hear what you think of it.

Here’s why. I’m back on the subject of my SDHC cards which I read and use from an external card reader. That’s a separate thread we won’t go into now. But here’s an additional thing that happens. I’ll use Windows Explorer to copy some music files to the SDHC card and part way through the copy I get a message saying that it can’t copy (filename) because the “path is too deep!” It doesn’t happen often and most frequently when I try a LONG list of files to copy. Copying a smaller group of files seems to help avoid the message.

Just a short while ago I was copying some files to the card and got that message on one file. The copy of course aborts at that point. So, I copied the rest of the files, leaving that one aside. Afterward, I tried copying the file again, all by itself, and it went OK at that time. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the problem is caused by the slowness of the SDHC card. File size isn’t the problem, because it happens on large and small files both. Given that it worked OK the second time, I don’t believe the problem is really the length of the path.

Googling around draws LOTS of hits, many of which have to do with Windows Home Server. In this link (“Path too Deep” Error Message – We have the Answer) is where I found a reference for TeraCopy, hence my question for fellow Loungers. Thanks for listening!

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Being the risk taker that I am, I Googled around on this vendor and didn’t find anything bad. For example, Secunia has no “advisories” on TeraCopy. I saw the usual hit or two where someone was having trouble with other products so I think I’ll continue reading more of the hits to see if anyone talks about this:
[indent]I installed the program and did a test run from hard drive to SDHC card. To see if it would belch on a large number of files, I copied 48 files to the card. One thing is for sure, the “speed” of the card is the gaiting factor – SLOW. It took a long, long time to copy those 48 files. But the bad news is, the music on the destination MP3 files will not play with WMP. I get an error message that even though it says MP3, the format is incorrect. WMP will not play them, even if I ask it to go ahead and try.
[/indent]So then I repeated that copy of 48 files using Windows Explorer drag-n-drop as usual. Again, I had time for coffee, a shower and a trip outside for a smoke and they were still copying. BUT, when they did finish the files WILL play from the card using WMP. I can’t (so far) find anything I did wrong or any comments on the web about it, but I’ll keep looking. I plan to do another test from hard drive to another temp folder on the hard drive. Maybe that will let me judge if the speed of the card is causing corruption.

I’m still open for more discoveries from anyone…

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Al
Remember you can use WinMerge™ to compare two copied directories!
And, of course, RoboCopy is unequalled in this sort of copying requirement…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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And, of course, RoboCopy is unequalled in this sort of copying requirement…

The linked post in AL’s first post claims that the problem exists in RoboCopy also. Do you know that is does not? Or do you know how to work around it?

Joe

--Joe

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The linked post in AL’s first post claims that the problem exists in RoboCopy also. Do you know that is does not? Or do you know how to work around it?

No, I didn’t check the linked post, and unfortunately I have no experience of intensive use of SDHC cards. RoboCopy is just the first tool I reach for when wanting to do reliable copies, so I’m surprised that it has problems with copying to anything…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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Just in case this thread ends up being more for searchers than anything else, here’s a followup of what I did wrong!

The screenshots on their web site don’t show this, so maybe they’re down level from the current version. I haven’t had time to check yet. But, the TeraCopy screen has a slider on it for buffer size. When I made my first run, it came up showing 256K with plenty of room to spare. Thinking me in stupidity, give it more buffer might make the job better. NOT!

When it came to me that I had changed it from its DEFAULT, I tried again and this time I noticed the line at the bottom of the screen:

So I left it at 256K and tried a bunch more songs to the card and shazaam, worked like a charm. And a final postscript from my Googling. There were a few complaints about failures or problems with some of the other software products offered and even something about smart aleck email and non-responsiveness. Maybe it’s a one-man show, I don’t know.

If you give TeraCopy a tryout, just make sure you give yourself an “escape” route.

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Presuming that the problem is linked to excessively-long file paths (in which case it is a Windows problem, which might be poorly handled by the copying program used), I can say that I have had experience with this. Sorting this out is a deeply tedious affair, often requiring setting share points to directories some way down the lengthy path, before truncating or rewording directory and file names. To be avoided…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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So, one last thing and I’ll leave it alone. I did the last folder full of MP3 music containing 120 files at 405 megabytes.

Copying to another folder on the same hard drive took 18 seconds! Seems pretty fast to me!

Copying to the SDHC card on the other hand took a few hours and I didn’t even bother to time it! It’s a good thing I don’t do that very often. (There’s an “event” coming up on Friday for which I need to have certain music in my shirt pocket.)

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