I'm using Windows Explorer to "copy" and "paste" from an old Buffalo NAS drive to an internal hard drive. The amount of data is just under 1Tbyte. However, it has been my experience that using Windows Explorer to copy massive amounts of data files may not be the best method. This is because many things interrupt Windows Explorer as it copies - such as permissions, errors, or other glitches. While Explorer is copying it will suddenly stop when there is a problem with a file or directory - prompting for user interaction with a dialog box. Explorer might even ‘give up’ copying somewhere in the middle - making it very difficult to determine what files were successfully copied - and which weren’t copied. So, if the copying process requires hours - or even days - then using Explorer isn’t practical.
I need a robust method to transfer millions of files. An application that can handle moving millions of files - creating a log file of any errors - rather than coming to a complete halt - and automatically moving on to copy everything else possible - instead of just giving up as soon as there’s an issue (which is what Explorer tends to do).
So my basic question is: How do I reliably copy millions and millions of files from an old Buffalo NAS drive to another drive in one step - without interruption or failure?
EDIT:
This might be what I'm looking for:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy#examplesI used the mirror switch with robocopy /mir
From the DOS prompt:
> ROBOCOPY <source> <target> /MIR
The above efficiently creates an exact copy. If the file exists in the destination directory then it will not be copied. There might be a way to export an error log (maybe using > textfile.txt after the command)
