Best Way to Copy a Mass Amount of Files to Another PC?

**ThatCrazyShaman** · 12-20-2014, 10:37 PM

I figured I'd ask about this here, because talking to computer-savvy gamers tends to save me a lot more time than being talked in circles by people on the Windows help forums.

I just got a new laptop to replace my current one, due to the fact that it's gone downhill quite fast, with my OS becoming corrupted, and then my hard drive suddenly developing problems. I'm now faced with an issue, though - how should I go about copying over the outrageous amount of files to the new one? I've never had to do this before, so I really don't know what I should do.

The problem is that there's so many of them. At least 20,000 in one folder alone. So I can't copy them over manually. And Windows Backup no longer works [it crashes the pc due to some mysterious file it can't read that I can't locate], so I can't do that, either.

Can anyone fill me in on the best way to go about this?

**Rapture** · 12-20-2014, 10:49 PM

# of files doesn't equal the time it takes to transfer them over. What is the total size of it all?

Buy a flash drive or external hard drive matching the size of total number of files you want to transfer and use that.

**ThatCrazyShaman** · 12-20-2014, 11:07 PM

(12-20-2014, 10:49 PM)Rapture Wrote: # of files doesn't equal the time it takes to transfer them over. What is the total size of it all?

Buy a flash drive or external hard drive matching the size of total number of files you want to transfer and use that.

I'm not actually worried about time it will take, but about whether my computer would be able to handle it. In total, there's probably at least 140GB of stuff to be transferred, assuming that I don't delete anything beforehand. My computer is very fidgety, so I'm concerned that trying to do it manually would crash it.

**Traggey** · 12-20-2014, 11:31 PM

Just switch the harddrives around.

**7heDubz** · 12-20-2014, 11:45 PM

plug both into the one computer and copy pasta?

**Mudbill** · 12-21-2014, 12:19 AM

You can try to compress it into .zip files using something like WinRAR but it surely isn't necessary. Compressed files are quicker to transfer cause they are smaller in file size, but including the time it takes to compress them probably won't justify doing it, however it is an option. It will make many files placed into a single compressed archive, which can be easier to move.

Otherwise, even if your OS is corrupted, if it still is functional it should be able to copy and paste files around. Seeing as you have a laptop, you probably won't be switching hard drives around, so if you can get a USB flash drive, you can use that, but it will probably take some time unless you get a fairly large one. You can get an actual USB external hard drive instead, which should have enough capacity.

**Red** · 12-21-2014, 12:30 AM

Get a docking station for the 'ol hdd, one which can be paired with usb. (But firstly make sure the docking station supports the hdd; laptops have often different hdd's)
That's one solution also.

**ThatCrazyShaman** · 12-21-2014, 03:08 AM

(12-21-2014, 12:19 AM)Mudbill Wrote: You can try to compress it into .zip files using something like WinRAR but it surely isn't necessary. Compressed files are quicker to transfer cause they are smaller in file size, but including the time it takes to compress them probably won't justify doing it, however it is an option. It will make many files placed into a single compressed archive, which can be easier to move.

Otherwise, even if your OS is corrupted, if it still is functional it should be able to copy and paste files around. Seeing as you have a laptop, you probably won't be switching hard drives around, so if you can get a USB flash drive, you can use that, but it will probably take some time unless you get a fairly large one. You can get an actual USB external hard drive instead, which should have enough capacity.

One concern I have about copying and pasting is that whenever I try to copy large amounts of data to paste elsewhere, it tends to freeze my computer, forcing me to reboot it manually. I've also run into the problem of trying to copy some files over to my external hard drive and getting the blue screen because one of them was apparently corrupted and unable to be read [and yet it opened just fine before I tried to copy it over].

Regardless, thanks for the suggestions, everyone!

**Mudbill** · 12-21-2014, 03:52 PM

Then you can try to compress them in chunks of, say, 10 GB each. Perhaps that would help with the "corrupted" files?

**ThatCrazyShaman** · 12-27-2014, 11:13 PM

(12-21-2014, 03:52 PM)Mudbill Wrote: Then you can try to compress them in chunks of, say, 10 GB each. Perhaps that would help with the "corrupted" files?

Hmm, that would take quite a while [since I finally verified that the folder in question has 111GB of stuff in it], but it is an idea!

I tried just selecting everything and copying it over, but it blue screened after copying some of the subfolders over. I still can't figure out what file is causing the issue, since the error log doesn't give me any useful information.

One suggestion I received was that I should try using Ubuntu to copy the files over, but I don't know if that would make a difference or not.