The changes address issues that Microsoft has identified after analyzing usage statistics of hundreds of millions of Windows users. Findings include that 20% of all copy jobs take longer than 2 minutes to complete, and that 5.61% of all copy jobs fail.

Microsoft based on statistics and usability studies decided to improve the copy experience in the following ways:

• Consolidate the copy experience to improve managing and monitoring capabilities.
• Remove distractions and concentrate on the information that users need.
• Give Windows users more control over the copy operations.

Copy jobs now run in one window, instead of multiple ones. If you currently start multiple copy jobs in Windows, you will notice that each displays the copy process and information in its own copying window. In Windows 8, users will see all of their jobs in one window.

Experienced users may have already noticed the pause icon next to each copy job in the above screenshot. It is now possible to pause specific jobs, for instance to speed up an important copy job.

A click on More Details is now revealing detailed information about each copy job, including realtime throughput data of each job.

Microsoft is also addressing the conflict window that is for instance displayed when a file already exists in the destination folder. The current conflict resolution dialog is confusing and not clear at all.

The new conflict resolution dialog displays less information on the screen, but enough to allow the user to make a decision right on the screen.

While I’m not entirely sure how the dialog will look like if there are dozens or even hundreds of conflicts, I can see its use for a small number of conflicts.

You can read up on all the improvements at the Building Windows 8 blog. (via Windows 8)

The result is always the same: You need to manual fix the copy job by locating the files that were not copied properly. Sometimes you need to stop an application from running or accessing a file before you can do that.

WinMend File Copy is a free program for the Windows operating system that not only promises to copy files up to 300% faster than Windows Explorer but also to keep a queue of all files and folders that need copying. That’s handy if Windows throws errors during the copying or moving of files.

Using a program like WinMend File Copy on the other hand may not be as comfortable as using Windows Explorer as it does not integrate into Windows Explorer. This makes the application less usable for copying a limited amount of files.

The copy software shines when it comes to copying large files and lots of files. A copy job consists of one or multiple files or folders that you add to the program with the help of buttons in the interface. The only other setting that is mandatory is the destination folder that you need to select as well.

WinMend File Copy can be configured to overwrite, skip or match and overwrite files of the same name. The only other setting available is the buffer size for the process which is set to 10 MB by default.

Another benefit of WinMend File Copy is the ability to copy files from multiple folders and locations in one go which is not possible in Windows Explorer.

Windows users who are looking for a queue based copy program for Windows can download the latest version of WinMend File Copy from the developer website. The program is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

File corruption can also originate from crashes or viruses. The effect on the system is however always the same: Files become unusable. Users with backups can simply restore a backup, providing that they are still usable, users without backups on the other hand need to use file recovery software to recover files partially or even fully.

Roadkill’s Unstoppable Copier has just been released in a new version. The software is offered as a portable version and installer for Windows and Linux operating systems. It uses a different approach than most file recovery tools, since it will not try to recover deleted files. The app tries to copy existing files from a damaged hard drive or storage device.

roadkills unstoppable copier

Copy Damaged Files

The program offers two operating modes. Copy is the first mode, accessible in the first tab of the program. It can be used to copy files from one source directory to a target directory. Statistics about the transfer are displayed in the lower half of the screen, including the number of good, corrupt and skipped files.

According to the developer, Roadkill’s Unstoppable Copier allows to “copy files from disks with problems such as bad sectors, scratches or that just give errors when reading data”, by attempting “to recover every readable piece of a file and put the pieces together”.

While there is not a guarantee that the program will recover all files stored on a damaged storage disk, it can often restore the files partially so that they become usable again (which obviously is only true for non-binary files).

Backup System

Batch Mode is the second mode of operation offered by the software program. It largely acts as a backup system. Multiple pairs of source and target folders can be added in batch mode, to process them immediately, or regularly through the supported command line parameters.

Roadkill’s Unstoppable Copier supports several command line parameters. This includes copying files from a source to a target folder (as in the Copy tab in the UI), and the execution of a batch mode file. The Online Help of the application contains all the information needed to configure those processes.

Data recovery options can be customized in the program’s settings. Here it is possible to switch from best data recovery mode to faster recovery modes, enable the resuming of partial files, enable context menu entries or to set the maximum number of retries.

file recovery software

Unstoppable Copier is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows and Linux systems, including Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. Take a look at other file recovery and backup software tools that we have reviewed in the past if you need an application for a different purpose, or if the application does not yield the desired results.

N2ncopy is a tiny Windows computer software program that allows to copy or move multiple files from different locations to different targets. The application will display a tiny overlay window that can be moved around freely on the screen. The window is divided into a green and blue area. Files that should be moved or copied can be dragged into the green area while the blue area is reserved for the target directories.

A right-click on the tiny interface will open the main interface displaying all the files and targets that have been dragged and dropped into the application up to this point. It is possible to remove some or all of the files and targets again and to specify of the task should by copying or moving files.

The only other options are to define rules if files with identical names are encountered in the target directories. Choices are to either overwrite those files or to rename the new files automatically.

A click on the Do the task button will start the file copying process while a click on Return will display the small overlay window again that can be used to add additional files and targets to the program. The program uses less than 3 Megabytes of computer memory while running.

A window displaying the file copying progress will be shown during the file transfers as well as a status report at the end of the process indicating if it was completed successfully.

TeraCopy is a nice shell enhancement for Windows replacing the original copy popup with a more advanced version. It integrates itself into the context menu so that you work as usual and don’t need to run additional external applications for the same process. TeraCopy gives you more options to copy or move files, e.g. a pause/resume function, error recovery and an dynamically adjusted buffer.

Error recovery means that it tries to copy the file several times and if it doesn’t succeed in copying this file it just continues with the next one. This means that it does not abort the whole transfer which is quite important for copying large amounts of data.

By adjusting the value of the buffer size on the fly it is possible to make the transfer commence a bit faster. I didn’t actually test it but they say it may speed up file transfers between two hard drives slightly. You can also switch between compact mode and full mode. Full mode shows a complete list of transfered files and warns about failed transfers.