Transferring some files off a failed laptop presented an odd problem for ViceVersa – a software tool that I use to copy and synchronise data from one location to another. After synchronising what should have been the whole of a partition – I noted that the amount transferred was not equal to the amount expected – skipped files.
Since I had a caddy handy – I removed the disk from the laptop and mounted it as a drive on my main workstation. Despite efforts to copy the whole content of the drive – the amounts copied did not match the expectation.
Time for some robocopy.
Using robocopy I attempted to copy the entire file driectory and subdirectories – and thats where I got a clus as to what was preventing the copy. Robocopy reported an error 5 and stopped processing. It stayed stuck in a loop.
So I repeated the command using the /b flag to try and process the files in backup mode and off it went at a sprint.
the command used was simply
Robocopy l: n: /MIR /B
where l: is the source drive and n: the target where I want the files to end up.
So a useful addition to your toolset if like me you regularly copy data from laptop drives.