Rich Copy is a file transfer software that has been in internal use by Microsoft for quite some time. The developers have now made it available for public use. The file transfer software program adds many new features to Windows Explorer file transfers including parallel transfers (also called multithreaded transfers), pausing and resuming the file copying process and a plethora of additional options.

The main difference between Rich Copy and third party tools like TeraCopy is the missing Windows Explorer integration of Rich Copy. It is an external file transfer program with an unbelievable set of options. To name a few of the advanced options that are available:

• Set thread count and cache size for transfers as well as process priorities
• Set or remove file attributes automatically
• Selecting specific errors to immediately stop the copying process
• Include or exclude specific files from being copied specifying file names, file attributes and / or dates.
• Running commands before and after the file transfer
• Extensive file operating logging
• Different file transfer modes and additional copying restrictions based on security, size or time stamps

Rich Copy has been primarily been designed to speed up but also give more control to file transfers in the Windows operating system. Users who simply want to speed up the original Windows Explorer copying process are better of using file transfer software like Teracopy or Fast Copy which integrates itself nicely into Windows Explorer and replaces the original file transfer dialog.

A major difference between the two applications is the fact that Fast Copy does not hijack the original Windows copy, delete and move operations but comes only into play when the user selects the application to handle the transfers. This can be done by loading Fast Copy or adding Fast Copy entries to the right-click context menu. The option for the latter is provided in the program’s options.

Since the usage is not automatic using Fast Copy makes only sense in situations where the user has to copy many files and folders at once, for example when moving the contents of one hard drive to another. It simply takes about five to ten seconds to start the file transfer because the source and destination locations have to be added to the program manually.

The context menu entry is only adding the source location to the program but the destination would still have to be selected manually. Fast Copy uses parallel processing if the source and destination location are on different hard drives and a huge buffer if they are on the same. It comes with a lot of options that can be changed like the buffer size or actions to take if a file exists in the destination.

The command line options might make it usable for batch files that use file operations. It lacks a few of the features that TeraCopy comes with like a queue that offers options to skip files or pause the process.

Fast Copy in its current version can be used in batch files because of its command line parameters and to copy large amount of files. It does not work as a real transfer replacement for Windows and have to leave that field to Teracopy.