Solved What's the best way to copy flash drives?

cheaterslick said:

What about exFat? Most of my USBs are formatted that way. Any issues with UNICODE and over MAX_PATH (260 characters) file pathnames with that?

I know I had some errors when I tried just copying & pasting (CTRL+C, CTRL+V) from one exFat-formatted USB to another.

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By design, exFAT has a theoretical maximum path length of 32,767 characters that are encoded as UTF-16 so, UNICODE and long path names are supported by it similar to NTFS, but unlike NTFS, the name of each component within the path (i.e. where multiple components can be separated by backslash characters) is limited to maximum 255 characters by exFAT. So, due to this 255 character limit, there can be situations where path names cannot be losslessly converted from NTFS to exFAT. The advanced logging capabilities of FastCopy will let you see exactly what are the files/folders that it failed to copy. As a result, it can help you save an enormous amount of time from not having to worry about those specific files/folders that have been copied perfectly fine. This is only one example of where the more primitive tools like Robocopy will fall flat on their face. I have already pointed this out in several other threads over the past few years, on here and on TenForums. As a matter of fact, Robocopy cannot even preserve special characters in the log that it writes, and, even if Microsoft decided to fix that problem, it still doesn't let you see exactly what are the files/folders that it failed to copy, as Robocopy still can't do error logging on a per-file basis. Tools like FastCopy exist because of this and various other shortcomings that some users (myself included) simply don't want to waste their time with.

hsehestedt said:

Robocopy should be able to make short work of this,

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It should be. But the unfortunate reality is that it is not.

Almighty1 said:

Thanks for posting that link.... I had Tabs Outliner with that site as a tab and Tabs Outliner's database somehow broke so it's blank. That was the site I was trying to remember when reading this thread a few days ago as I always used it to clone the MicroSD on the old phone to a new MicroSD for the new phone which is always the biggest capacity at that moment in time available.

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Glad it helped.

Many who have posted other options are missing the boat.

Xcopy does an outstanding job with even the hidden files and /or elements thus creating a "perfect copy" with ZERO problems.

Just try it. Just use it. No problems, no errors, no disappointment.

Save the instructions or print screen for next time - just in case.

Best solution out there. Tried and true.

PCUser said:

Glad it helped.

Many who have posted other options are missing the boat.

Xcopy does an outstanding job with even the hidden files and /or elements thus creating a "perfect copy" with ZERO problems.

Just try it. Just use it. No problems, no errors, no disappointment.

Save the instructions or print screen for next time - just in case.

Best solution out there. Tried and true.

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Yes, had used it since 2012 if not earlier. It has never failed yet.

Agreed 100 %

Xcopy in Windows does a phenomenal job when used properly with ZERO errors. Still, many are searching for a different solution lol.

PCUser said:

Agreed 100 %

Xcopy in Windows does a phenomenal job when used properly with ZERO errors. Still, many are searching for a different solution lol.

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Xcopy still doesn't support path names with a length that exceeds 260 characters.

hdmi said:

It should be. But the unfortunate reality is that it is not.

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Maybe it works for me because I'm doing it right . Okay, all joking aside, I guess that creating an image as with Macrium Reflect would be the best bet.

If not creating an image, for example, if trying something like Robocopy, I would strongly suggest manually initializing the UFD as MBR.

hsehestedt said:

Maybe it works for me because I'm doing it right . Okay, all joking aside,

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I am definitely not the only one who has witnessed it first hand the fact that it has a bad habit of reporting an error count above zero in the summary of the log when there are no lines that contain ERROR to be found anywhere in the log. I am using the /unilog:<logfile> parameter to produce an Unicode log and the /v parameter for Verbose output. I may be an idiot, but I am a serious idiot!

hsehestedt said:

I guess that creating an image as with Macrium Reflect would be the best bet.

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I don't use imaging software for copying individual folders and files from one mass storage device to the next. I have a very simple explanation why. It's called FastCopy.

hsehestedt said:

If not creating an image, for example, if trying something like Robocopy, I would strongly suggest manually initializing the UFD as MBR.

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My USB flash drives are initialized as GPT because I scratched booting from USB with a legacy BIOS off of my list of requirements almost 10 years ago.

hdmi said:

I don't use imaging software for copying individual folders and files from one mass storage device to the next. I have a very simple explanation why. It's called FastCopy.

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Ok, so just for final clarification, both Robocopy and Xcopy fail, but FastCopy will catch & copy the kind of files that I specified at the top of this thread. Correct?

cheaterslick said:

Ok, so just for final clarification, both Robocopy and Xcopy fail, but FastCopy will catch & copy the kind of files that I specified at the top of this thread. Correct?

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Every tool potentially can fail, and, in addition, a failed attempt to copy a file is not necessarily always the copy tool's fault. That's why there exists such a thing as error logging capability. The same with 1/ choosing to let verification be used or 2/ choosing to let file hash codes be calculated and stored (or a combination of both options) to make it more robust. But if you're dealing with the kind of error logging that, as a direct result of its own flaws or limitations, sometimes fails in such a particular way that won't let you accurately identify what files the tool failed to copy. Then clearly. Searching for a better tool makes all the perfect sense in the world. Ironically, Robocopy stands for robust file copy. lol

Ok, well that's good enough for me. I plan on fiddling around with FastCopy here in the near future and looking at all it's features. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks for everybody's input.

hdmi said:

My USB flash drives are initialized as GPT because I scratched booting from USB with a legacy BIOS off of my list of requirements almost 10 years ago.

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That may well be, but I typically suggest MBR to others because I never know whether they will use legacy BIOS or UEFI based systems. By going with MBR you guarantee that the UFD will work on ALL systems.

hsehestedt said:

That may well be, but I typically suggest MBR to others because I never know whether they will use legacy BIOS or UEFI based systems. By going with MBR you guarantee that the UFD will work on ALL systems.

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By choosing MBR, you guarantee that legacy BIOS is supported. Similarly, you guarantee that UEFI is supported by choosing GPT. Beyond that, you don't guarantee anything much, even though an argument can still be made that the number of UEFI systems that have trouble with MBR does appear to be significantly smaller than the number of legacy BIOS systems that have trouble with GPT. https://www.ventoy.net/en/doc_mbr_vs_gpt.html
Even so, the number of legacy BIOS systems out there has rapidly been declining over the past several years. But I also get the point that old means cheap, which, in turn, means that legacy BIOS systems remain fairly widespread even today. See the bottom of the page I linked:
Anyway, the best for you is the best.

Macrium Reflect can clone usb drives.

There is also a tool call win32diskimager that will clome usb drives.

Seems like these can do it too, no personal experience with it though since in my case, I just copy using File Explorer which did involve long filenames into VenToy as for the last 3 months, I have been copying the ISO files to different VenToy formatted USB Flash Drives and USB Portable SSD drives without issues.

I've never had a need to copy a flash drive, but I know I could get an exact copy cloning with my Macrium Reflect X.