Can't copy and paste from one external hard drive to another

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About7fish

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Jun 25, 2013
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I have an external that I usually use for network storage, and I decided to be prudent and make a back up of it. Only problem is, it refuses to take large folders. One single picture transferred just fine, but large folders (at least 12GB, that's the smallest size I tested with) give no copy dialog or anything of the sort. The system just goes back to business as usually, blissfully unaware that I even gave it a friggen command.

Any ideas as to why? I'm going to use my USB install of mint in case windows is the problem here, but I'd really like to understand what could be going wrong. The only thing I can think of is maybe some kind of driver conflict since they're both WD drives, but you'd think nothing would work if that were the case rather than only individual files working.
 
Solution
Hawkeye22
Xcopy or robocopy is what I'd recommend if you have continued problems with the file exploer. The windows file explorer tries to calculate the number of files, their sizes, total size, and estimated time before actually copying. The file explorer may seem unresponsive during this time when used on large folders. Sometimes if you wait long enough, it will start copying. Other times it either hangs or just gives up and closes down.

You may want to run a chkdsk /f on your drive just to be sure this isn't hindering your copy via explorer.
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About7fish

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Believe me, my first order of business was to format to NTFS. The other pre-existing drive is also NTFS with its own power supply rather than drawing from the USB port (I considered excess power draw as a reason for the failure but discounted that idea for this reason.
 
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About7fish

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Jun 25, 2013
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Actually, I'm xcopying as we speak (type, whatever). But I've come to the conclusion that it's not even just large files, as a 750MB folder transferred but a 1.23 GB folder did not. I seriously hope it does not become necessary to xcopy /s /d every single time I want to make backups. It's easy enough to do, but it's just kind of irritating.
 
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Hawkeye22

Hawkeye22

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Feb 10, 2006
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Xcopy or robocopy is what I'd recommend if you have continued problems with the file exploer. The windows file explorer tries to calculate the number of files, their sizes, total size, and estimated time before actually copying. The file explorer may seem unresponsive during this time when used on large folders. Sometimes if you wait long enough, it will start copying. Other times it either hangs or just gives up and closes down.

You may want to run a chkdsk /f on your drive just to be sure this isn't hindering your copy via explorer.
 
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About7fish

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Jun 25, 2013
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Interesting to note, transferring a large, 20GB folder from my internal to the same drive that was giving me trouble is working. USB power issue since I cheaped out and got an asrock extreme3?

Either way, I guess the problem is solved. I'll mark Hawkeye's xcopy post as the solution since xcopy did in fact work.
 
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