Programs for quickly copying files. Programs for copying files

Dimensions hard drives and the amount of data occupied is constantly increasing. At one time, 40 megabyte drives seemed quite large. Now, disks are measured not only in gigabytes, but also in terabytes. And sometimes even they are not enough. However, the increase in size not only came as good news for users, but also gave rise to a number of problems. One of these problems was copying files.

Previously, the copying process consisted of copying small groups of files, so the standard mechanism was quite sufficient. Today, the standard mechanism can no longer provide the power that is required. This is also a limit on copying speed for large sizes, And background mode, and automatic continuation of copying for removable drives, and filters, and checking the result, and much more. The lack of necessary functions has given rise to a class of programs for copying files, whose task is to make the copying process as flexible and customizable as possible.

Within the framework of this article, several free utilities. Testing was carried out on a music collection of 21.7 GB. Among important criteria to select the best free programs were: speed, reliability, ease of use and non-standard functions.

Note Note: It is important to understand the difference between copy utilities and backup programs. They have different task, despite the fact that they can be used for both copying and creating backups. In the case of copying programs, the main emphasis is on the process itself, namely on the flexibility and controllability of data copying. As a result, there are no special functions for comparing file contents and for tracking added/deleted files. In the case of backup utilities, the emphasis is more on preserving the identity of existing copies. And as a consequence, the lack of special functions to control the copying process. Of course, in this case, copying should also be fast, it’s just that the process itself is not a priority.

Review of free programs for copying files

FastCopy is an excellent file copy manager

UltraCopier

Unstoppable Copier

TeraCopy

Handy Backup is a program for copying files, folders, databases, email, creating an image of the hard drive and other data, as well as their quick recovery.

In the event of equipment failure, viruses, or even simple user error, it is important to have backup copy data to prevent their loss. This is especially true for the business sector, where data loss can lead to large financial losses, and often bankruptcy.

However for home user backup is also great: family photos, favorite films, personal correspondence and much more - I wouldn’t want to lose it all.

Backing up your home computer

Handy Backup Standard is a program for copying files and folders, Windows registry And various applications(MS Outlook, Skype, WhatsApp, etc.), including their settings. The application has a convenient and intuitive interface - even a novice PC user can easily create a backup task and designate the necessary properties for it. A special step-by-step wizard will help you do this:

• Step 1. Select data to copy. If you want to create a backup copy of an application, just select its name from the list - and the program will automatically find all the necessary data.
• Step 2. Determine storage for copies. The program can copy files and other data to local or external hard drives, remote FTP/SFTP/FTPS servers, cloud storage, and much more.
• Step 3. Set additional properties. If required, you can set the copy to be encrypted and compressed.
• Step 4. Set a schedule. A flexible task scheduler will allow you to fully automate the copying process on a schedule. Operations will be performed at the time you specify: daily, weekly or with another period.

Every PC user has ever encountered copying files from one media to another (from USB to hard drive and back, from disk to hard drive, and so on). At the same time, in the old Windows versions data reading errors often occurred, which could appear even on a slightly worn CD or DVD disc. Fortunately, the Internet offers many programs for copying files that will allow you to ignore, and sometimes even correct, file reading errors, and successfully complete the process without losing information.

Selecting a program to copy files.

FastCopy is completely free, small and at the same time very useful tool, intended for quick copying data to your computer's hard drive. The application also allows you to delete selected files. In addition, the program provides the ability to speed up the copying process, eliminating certain files or enable the NonStop function (copying will continue despite detected errors). In addition, FastCopy makes it possible to determine the copy speed and buffer size. With FastCopy Portable you can copy files faster than with using Windows Explorer, and without installation on your computer. FastCopy Portable does exactly one thing: copy files to another directory. But much faster than regular Explorer.

Instead of copying only very small chunks of files, like Explorer, FastCopy reads large chunks, so the program doesn't have to frequently move from one directory to another to read and write to your hard drive. This makes FastCopy incredible quick program copying with very low system load. The portable version can be copied anywhere and used without installation - making it ideal for use on a USB stick. Especially useful for users who often work on different computers.

Program for copying files and Total folders Copy is an alternative traditional way copying files in Windows. Improvements include the ability to pause and resume copying if the target disk fails or becomes full.

Advantages:

• the program can resume copying after a power failure or target disk failure

Flaws:

• not found.

Total Copy is very easy to use. The file should be “grabbed” with the right mouse button and dragged to the target folder. At this stage, a context menu appears that offers copying or moving a file in Total Copy mode. Additional option is the ability to adjust the copy speed, which is useful for freeing system resources for other applications. It copies faster than traditional system tool. Total Copy is a great replacement standard operation copying. Speeds up copying and allows you to fully control this action. It will be useful for users of older machines where the copying process large files can be a real problem.

SuperCopier contains full menu settings, which allows you to customize the operation of not only the program itself, but also some details in the interface. SuperCopier allows you to copy and paste files and folders into Windows much faster, more securely, and more efficiently.

Advantages:

• easy integration with Windows Explorer;
• much faster than standard utility copying Windows;
• allows you to create copy lists and stop the copying process;
• settings menu.

Flaws:

• primitive interface - fortunately, it can be customized!

You can launch the program from the icon in the system or simply copy and paste files and folders in the usual way: SuperCopier is built into Windows Explorer and will take care of this task. This program not only speeds up copying and moving files, but also adds new useful parameters: You can now pause and resume a task at any time, check the transfer speed, check the percentage completion rate, create lists of files to copy or move, and even change the list while the process is already running. The most important thing is that SuperCopier does not replace standard function Windows copy and paste, so you can try it and just delete it if you're not happy with it.

TeraCopy allows you to quickly copy or move files to Windows system is a program for quickly copying files, which will be especially useful when it comes to several gigabytes of data.

Advantages:

• much faster than standard method Windows;
• integrated into Windows Explorer;
• Drag and drop support.

Flaws:

• Not so intuitive interface.

You can launch TeraCopy yourself, in which case you must drag or move files into the program window. TeraCopy copies and transfers large volumes of files much faster than standard dispatcher Windows files.

Software features:

• better removal of USB devices;
• “CardReader” option for ini file;
• option "ForceSameDriveMode";
• new language packs;
• improved performance when testing md5 files.

IMPORTANT. Always check the destination folder and request administrator rights if necessary.

Unstoppable Copier is not a deleted data recovery program. This tool is only useful in situations where the normal procedures for copying, moving, or reading files do not work and the operating system reports an error. Unstoppable Copier is actually a tool for copying data that is visible but inaccessible in the system, for example, due to the appearance of bad sectors on the hard drive or scratches on the optical media.

Standard procedures for copying and moving files implemented in the operating system interrupt the operation on the file (reading, writing, etc.) if any error occurs. If you try to copy files from a scratched CD/DVD, most often it will fail because even if 99% of the file is copied correctly, failure to read even the last fragment means the entire operation will fail. Unstoppable Copier ignores errors. When a read error occurs, it does not abort the copy, but saves the previously copied portion of the file and then tries to continue to ignore bad sectors. The read file fragments are combined into one, which is ultimately saved in a destination location specified by the user.

With default settings, Unstoppable Copier preserves the attributes of files copied from damaged media. You can also specify the number of attempts to read data. Unstoppable Copier will not help you read data that the system no longer sees.

Traditional backup utilities are useful for storing backup copies of your files, but if you need to back up your entire operating system, programs, or personal settings, we need a much more functional application. If you suspect that your hard drive is about to fall out, you can take immediate action with HDClone Free Edition. After a simple setup procedure software will clone your hard drive along with any data it contains. Besides free version HDClone comes in Basic, Standard, Professional and Enterprise versions. The functionality of the free version is quite limited, but it can be used for cloning hard drive in case emergency. Installation file is 16 MB and takes about a minute to install all components.

You can run any version of HDClone on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, as well as on various servers. The software will automatically guide you through the entire process using step by step instructions. You can back up your hard drive and save it as an image file, create a clone and send it to another storage device, or restore previously created backups.

The utility can perform the same actions on individual partitions. The above features appear as large icons on a clean and clear interface. Once you select one of them, you can proceed to the next step by clicking the “Next” button. Preparing the copying or cloning process is not difficult. The procedure involves selecting a hard drive or partition, assigning it, and making a few final settings. When you select a destination, you can also select multiple options if you want to create a RAW or Smart image, or if you want to encrypt it.

Advantages:

• the utility is capable of cloning everything hard drives;
• the contents of the hard drive can be saved as an image file or mirrored on another mass storage device;
• the process is intuitive, so setting up the program will not take much time;

Flaws:

• significant limitations of the free trial version of the software.

Copying information from damaged disks or to a flash drive is not a job for the faint of heart. Especially when it comes to huge file sizes. It’s especially disappointing when, after copying 99% of the information, the system gives a read error and the entire process is interrupted. Fortunately, most of the utilities described above will help solve the problem of lengthy copying, making the process much faster, and also offer many additional functions.

If your computer is slow to copy files to a flash drive or hard drive, do not rush to blame the devices for their “slowness.” Perhaps the problem is the imperfection of Windows itself...

And it was like this. I had to dump a large ZIP archive of more than 3 gigabytes onto a flash drive from one computer in our “office” (there was a bunch of all sorts of documentation from previous years). The average write speed to my flash drive is approximately 3-4 megabytes per second. Reasonably reasoning that at this speed the archive will be copied in about 17-25 minutes (roughly speaking 1000-1500 seconds :)), to my misfortune I set the copying to happen half an hour before the end of the working day...

As a result, this ill-fated file was copied for almost an hour! This left me late at work and the next day wondering why files might be slow to copy and how to speed up the copying if necessary. Let's try to figure it out...

What affects copy speed

What is file copying in general? This is nothing more than reading a bit sequence in certain sectors disk drive with their subsequent recording in other sectors or on another medium. Theoretically, the speed of reading and writing depends only on the information storage device itself: that is, its factory performance parameters. However, in practice everything is much more complicated.

IN real conditions A number of other parameters need to be taken into account:

• degree of wear of the carrier;
• quality of data transmission connecting cables;
• quality of the carrier's nutrition;
• correct BIOS settings;
• Availability of motherboard drivers;
• set mode data transmission;
• the degree of clutter in Windows.

All of the above, together or separately, can reduce the speed of data copying. For example, the longer we use a storage medium, the greater the likelihood that some of the sectors in it will become unreadable, which will slow down any file operations. Poor contact of the data cable can lead to short circuits and information loss, and insufficient power will prevent the device from working at full capacity.

The problem may also be hidden in the BIOS. Almost everything modern computers have hard drives controlled by a SATA controller. In the BIOS, this controller must be activated (“Enabled”) and operate in “AHCI” mode (unless, of course, you have a modern OS Windows 7 or higher):

Also take care to check the availability of drivers for the chipset. If they are not installed, then south bridge Your PC may not work correctly on standard drivers Windows, which may well lead to problems when working with storage media and USB devices.

If all of the above does not suit you, then another way to solve the problem of slow copying is regular means may be a change in data transmission mode. To do this, call Device Manager, open the "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" section, call the properties of the controller that is responsible for the operation of your hard drive and check in the " tab Additional options" set data transfer mode. Should be "DMA if available" and the current mode is ultra DMA 5:

If it is PIO and you can’t change it, then you most likely have a system failure. You can try to fix it by removing the device with PIO transfer mode and restarting the computer. If this does not help, then the problem can only be solved by reinstalling Windows.

The last option for speeding up copying for owners of Windows 7 and higher (although this doesn’t seem to be the case in Ten) is to disable the “Remote Differential Compression” component. To do this, go to the Control Panel, the "Programs and Features" section, click the "Turn on or off" item at the bottom left Windows components" and uncheck the corresponding box:

Copy acceleration technology

Now let’s imagine that everything works as it should, but copying is still slow... Why? It all comes down to the principle of copying. In normal mode, it occurs according to the following scheme: a small block of information is read into RAM or cache memory and then written to right place (new block on your hard drive or removable media) and further along the cycle.

For small files, this direct copy scheme is quite acceptable, but for large files it can cause slowdowns. Is there any way to speed up their copying? Theoretically, yes! To do this, you need to use some kind of fast storage medium that will cache the entire file at once (or at least most of it) and write from its own fast memory continuous flow.

One of the most versatile and available devices this kind of thing in a computer is RAM. With standard copying, data can also be transferred through it, but in the form of a stream of small clusters of information. If we first read and place the entire file in it, then we can get a significant acceleration when writing it in continuous form! This is exactly the approach that is implemented existing programs to optimize copying, which I propose to consider (by the way, similar algorithms began to be used in Windows, starting with G8, but they are still far from ideal).

Before installation, I decided to take a control measurement. 20 small (200 - 800 KB) image files with a total size of 16 megabytes and one large ISO image of 3 GB were taken. The copying time within one hard drive partition was 2 seconds. for pictures and 2 min. 3 sec. for a large file. On a flash drive (average write speed - 5 MB/sec) the recording lasted 3.4 seconds. and 9 min. 35 sec. respectively. Let's now try to copy from special utilities and compare the difference.

Programs to speed up copying

The most famous program for speeding up copying is TeraCopy:

On the official website you can download its free version, which has basic functionality, and then (if desired) buy the PRO edition with additional functions. However. we are only interested in free software, so we will refuse purchases and try to work as is.

During installation, we will be asked to install TeraCopy in normal or portable mode, as well as create the necessary shortcuts and associate with some files (it is better to remove the association). After the installation is complete, the main and only working window will launch, which, fortunately, has a Russian-language interface.

To copy through the program you need to drag it into its window necessary files and specify the final folder where these files need to be placed. In addition, TeraCopy is associated with Explorer and, when dragging or copying with hot keys, offers to do this using the program.

From additional features The free version is worth noting the ability to perform a number of actions to complete the copying (turning off the PC, opening the drive, testing the integrity of the copied files, etc.). The options also include the ability to activate sound playback upon completion of a task, as well as the use of the system cache for operation.

As for the results, on Windows 8.1 x64 they were not much better than the standard ones, although there was an increase. So, within the hard drive, copying 20 pictures (16 MB) took 1.5 seconds, and a 3 GB image took 1 minute. 48 sec. On a flash drive, recording lasted 2.95 seconds for images and 8 minutes. 32 sec. for a large file respectively.

Next we will test Japanese program, which, according to the developers, implements the most fast algorithm copying files - FastCopy:

The program is completely free and has a separate 64-bit version. It is supplied as an archive with portable program and the setup.exe file, which allows you to install and register FastCopy in the system (a copy item will be added to context menu) or delete all associations.

Unfortunately, the interface language is only English, but not particularly fancy. The idea is simple: you need to select the source folder ("Source") and the destination folder into which you want to copy the contents of the source. To prevent all files from the specified directory from being copied, you can activate a filter ("Filter"), which allows you to set inclusion and exclusion masks (for example, *.exe or Image*.*). Not entirely convenient, but you can use it.

Regarding the results. Copying small files to another folder took 1.8 seconds, and large files were copied in 1 minute. 49 sec. Copying to the flash drive completed with results of 3.8 seconds. for pictures and 9 min. 12 sec. for the image. As you can see, despite the assurances of the developers, the results are not the best, but they are there.

German quality has always been valued. Let's see if it is in the Supercopier program, which “comes” from Germany:

The program is supplied as an installer or portable version. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are available. There is also a paid edition, which, in essence, serves as a “donation”, that is, your gratitude to the developer :) By the way, on portable version for some reason antivirus 360 was cursing Total Security, although there is no installer...

The interface is only partially Russified (especially in the menu there are many untranslated English words). But integration with the system is maximum: the program by default replaces the standard copy function without any additional questions, as in TeraCopy.

Among the additional functions, it is worth noting the ability to pause copying, automatically skip copying errors, import and export a list of files to move, as well as manual settings copy buffer size.

Regarding direct copying, the Germans, after all, let us down! Pictures in new folder copied almost instantly - in 0.9 seconds, but a 3 GB disk image - in 2 minutes. 6 sec. With a flash drive, however, it turned out better: 2.7 seconds. for images and 9 min. 20 sec. for a large file.

However, these results were obtained using standard settings. If, for example, we increase the block size from 256 KB to 1 MB, as well as the size of the buffers (sequential to 512 MB from 131 and parallel to 128 MB from 1), then the speed of copying large files will increase to 1 minute. 50 sec. on local hard drive and up to 8 min. 40 sec. on a removable one. True, then copying small data suffers: 1.6 seconds. and 3.1 sec. respectively...

Another contender for the title of best replacement for the standard copy function is the ExtremeCopy program:

The most current version The program is paid, however, its previous editions can be downloaded and used for free. True, they do not have the ability to manually configure specified buffer limits and other parameters, but it works quite well anyway. It is possible to download the 64-bit and portable (though even earlier) versions.

ExtremeCopy integrates well into the system, although it does not have a Russian language... Additional functionality The program doesn't shine either: there is only the ability to pause copying and skip files.

As for the copying speed, small pictures were copied to a new folder in exactly a second, and large file in 1 min. 48 sec. For a flash drive, the results are as follows: 3 seconds for “trifles” and 9 minutes. 13 sec. for the image.

Comparison

Conclusions

As you can see, the speed of file copying can actually be increased even in modern operating systems. What can we say about outdated Windows XP, Vista and 7. They did not yet have progressive data transfer systems, so the acceleration on them will be very significant.

In new operating systems, the increase is not particularly noticeable (maximum - 1 minute for large files and about a second for small ones). However, even here copying programs can be useful, since many of them have such additional features such as pausing copying, skipping files, and even creating a list of files and deferring copying from them. Therefore, choose the program that you like most and use it to your health!

P.S. Permission is granted to freely copy and quote this article, provided that open credit is given. active link to the source and preservation of the authorship of Ruslan Tertyshny.

Copying files in Windows is a trivial process and, in most cases, does not cause any difficulties or questions. The situation changes when we need to move large amounts of data on a regular basis. Programs designed to replace the standard copying tool will help with this. "Explorer" Windows and having some additional features.

Total Commander is one of the most famous file managers. It allows you to copy, rename and view files, as well as transfer data via the FTP protocol. The functionality of the program is expanded by installing plugins.

Unstoppable Copier

This software is a universal tool for copying documents and directories. It includes functions for reading corrupted data, executing batches of operations, and managing from « Command line» . Due to its functionality, the program also allows you to perform regular backups using system utilities.

FastCopy

FastCopy is a small program, but not large in functionality. It can copy data in several modes and has flexible settings for operation parameters. One of the features is the ability to create custom tasks with individual settings for quick execution.

TeraCopy

This program also helps the user to copy, delete and move files and folders. TeraCopy integrates into operating system, replacing the “native” copier, and in file managers, adding your own functions to them. The main advantage is the ability to test the integrity or identity of data arrays using checksums.

SuperCopier

This is another software integrated into the operating system that completely replaces "Conductor" in processing document copying tasks. SuperCopier is extremely easy to use, has the necessary settings and can work with "Command line".

All programs presented in this list are designed to facilitate the process of moving and copying large volumes of files, identify possible errors and optimize the consumption of system resources. Some of them are capable of making regular backups (Unstoppable Copier, SuperCopier) and calculating hash sums using various algorithms (TeraCopy). In addition, any program can conduct detailed statistics operations.