TeraCopy

I came across this little program today, and I have to say that it's great.

It's a simple copy program, that can do a bit more than the usual copy application in the Windows file manager. After installing, it opens every time you want to copy something, like with copy/paste (CTRL-C/CTRL-V), you don't have to open it manually, it integrates in the file manager, so instead of using the normal copy application, it straight away opens TeraCopy and does the copy.

There's some stuff that makes it better over the normal application.

First of all it's faster (at least that's what they claim), didn't test that yet.

It lets you pause/resume your copies, which is sometimes nice when you copy f.ex. 100GB, and you want to do something else quickly.

Sometimes during a copy, file manager suddenly stops because it could handle f.ex. one locked file, and you have to look what it then copied so far, and what it didn't do. TeraCopy stops, and asks you what you want to do with that file. Even if your PC would restart by any reason, you can resume the copy process later.

When you right click a file now in the file manager, you can chose TeraCopy, and browse to a folder where you want to copy your file, no no need to search. You can even make favorites, which comes in handy when f.ex. updating folders.

You can also set it to verify your files after copying, which is good when you copy loads of files.

It shows the source CRC in case you need it.

Plays a cute sound when copy is finished :)

So far, I'm really impressed what it can do, not a lot, but a big improvement to the normal copy process. And it's free.

http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php

Looks like a nice little program. Added to my list of useful shell programs like Hashtab, Desktop Restore, 7-zip etc.

Nice find and thanks for sharing. :)

Could be useful. Especially the resume feature. Will have to take a look.

The biggest thing that annoys me about the standard copy function is how it completely pauses when it encounters a problem and waits for your input to tell it what to do with a file it's having problems with. It would be much better if it just skipped any problematic files automatically (you can automate this after the first file issue by ticking the "perform the same action" box for similar files, but only for that same issue) and once it had finished copying everything to then open a window listing all the files it had a problem with and ask what to do with each. Maybe a tick box next to each in the list to abort or retry each copy.

Something else that annoys me with copying is left over folders. How many times I've moved a while directory to a new location, but at the end of the copy process it has alerted me that something couldn't be moved because it was "still in use", but on looking at the source location only the containing folder is still there and all its contents did successfully get moved. But it still refused to move or delete the directory folder. Maddening.

I used it a lot to copy stuff to and from PEN drives and external HDs.
Looks faster then explorer.

Adding to what people have mentioned above, another thing that caught my eye are the buffers and what looks like a CRC check option.

I always wondered why Windows can't use some larger copy buffers to speed up the process, instead of writing in tiny incriments even for large files. Also, I often do a CRC check when copying mission critical files - this can do that all in one process it seems.

Although I have all these things covered in Total Commander which is my preferred file manager, there are occasions when I use Explorer and having an option in shell is nice.

Originally Posted by harrison:
Something else that annoys me with copying is left over folders. How many times I've moved a while directory to a new location, but at the end of the copy process it has alerted me that something couldn't be moved because it was "still in use", but on looking at the source location only the containing folder is still there and all its contents did successfully get moved. But it still refused to move or delete the directory folder. Maddening.

Another handy little program for exactly this kind of situation is Unlocker which lets you free up any file that the system claims can't be handled because it's busy for some reason. Maybe it was open in a program that crashed and wasn't freed up properly. Whatever the cause, Unlocker will free the file or folder up letting you do whatever you wish to it. Unlocker integrates nicely with Windows and appears as a command in the right-click menu, also in other filemanagers like Directory Opus. Quite useful.

I'm using Unlocker since a long time, but I think it doesn't work for 64bit Win7, there I use a similar program called LockHunter.

I have been using one for a long time called KillBox which is pretty old, but that didn't integrate into the OS and you had to run it manually each time you needed it.

Just checked out Unlocker and since version 1.9.1 it supports 64bit OSs so I'm giving that a go. Also in its comparison chart it has a lot more features that LockHunter.

I've been using Teracopy and Unlocker for 3+ years. Teracopy is very useful, especially when doing long copies or big external backups. The buffer feature is great, also it copies quicker.