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Thread ID: 112326	2010-09-01 06:34:00	Just curious........Why is it that.........	Billy T (70)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1133649	2010-09-01 06:34:00	Copying folders and files from a hard disk to a memory stick by drag & drop is not a reliable process? I have been copying files to and from USB mounted hard drives by drag & drop for years with no problems and no files lost, but I recently copied the data drive from my old computer onto an 8GB Toshiba memory stick, and I keep finding random files missing in various folders. In some cases two thirds of the files are missing, which is more than just a minor glitch. No harm has been done as I have multiple back-ups, but it is annoying to plug in the stick and find the one file I want at that moment is missing and I have to go fetch it from elsewhere. There has to be some logical reason for this effect. :confused: Also, are there any good freeware synchronisation products out there that I can run to get my stick and other archives up to date and that won't overwrite versions with differing date stamps? Cheers Billy 8-{) :help:	Billy T (70)
1133650	2010-09-01 08:23:00	do you have same problem when using other sticks?	jareemon (5207)
1133651	2010-09-01 08:44:00	Memory sticks can have a very bad 'latency' or write delay when writing data to them (it's not an issue when reading from them). If you've yanked them out without doing the 'safe to remove...' routine once the moving files dialog has disappeared, then you may in fact have terminated the transfer before it was finished. (from a 'read source' perspective it may have been finished, but from a 'flush the RAM cache and write to stick' perspective it may not have been finished) Just a theory, not necessarily appropriate in your situation.	Paul.Cov (425)
1133652	2010-09-01 11:47:00	Memory sticks can have a very bad 'latency' or write delay when writing data to them (it's not an issue when reading from them). If you've yanked them out without doing the 'safe to remove...' routine once the moving files dialog has disappeared, then you may in fact have terminated the transfer before it was finished. (from a 'read source' perspective it may have been finished, but from a 'flush the RAM cache and write to stick' perspective it may not have been finished) Just a theory, not necessarily appropriate in your situation. Good thought, but no, I always wait until they are able to be removed and eject them properly. With this stick, and because I was transferring several Gigs, I put it in then left it alone during the data transfer and didn't come back till long after it was finished. It's kinda weird really, very un-digital behaviour. My other sticks are just 1GB so I couldn't use them for bigger transfers. Cheers Billy 8-{) :confused:	Billy T (70)
1133653	2010-09-01 12:02:00	What did you format it in? Are any of the files bigger than 4 GB?	Speedy Gonzales (78)
1133654	2010-09-01 12:08:00	You mention "old computer" - maybe it's a format issue - i.e. incompatibility between the pen drive and PC drives?	kahawai chaser (3545)
1133655	2010-09-01 12:15:00	Did one of the files fail to copy? One of the unfortunate shortcomings of Explorer's copy method is that if one file fails, then the remainder of the transfer is aborted. As a result, your target medium only contains those files that were copied before the error. As files aren't necessarily copied in the order you might expect, the effects of this can look somewhat random, and can cause exactly the problem you describe. Regarding file sync products - I would normally use rsync for this, but as it's a Linux / UNIX CLI tool it may not be quite what you're after (although it will do a very good job of what you're asking for).	Erayd (23)
1133656	2010-09-01 12:17:00	Whats the brand/model ?? Some have their own programs you can backup with	Speedy Gonzales (78)
1133657	2010-09-01 12:17:00	Could be an indication of a hardware fault, silent corruption causing the files to be dropped without error...	Agent_24 (57)
1133658	2010-09-01 13:48:00	SyncToy by Microsoft should do what you want regarding synchronization. It has many useful options to configure and is very reliable once you figure out exactly how to make it do what you want.	george12 (7)
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