Windows 10: (Need Help) copied my external drive to my desktop win10 pc..

..and 10+GB is missing!? I just want everything to copy over.. Why is this happening? And each retry seems to be even less!

:)

 

Why do Removeable HD and Flash Drives Take Files From Desktop?

I upgraded to Win10 Home from Win7 Home Premium about 3 weeks ago. All seemed to be good. However, today, when I went to place (copy) a file from my desktop to my WD My Passport Ultra external drive (G instead of just placing a copy on the WD drive the
file actually transferred from my desktop. This never occurred with XP or Win7 or before today with Win10 and seems strange that all of a sudden my external drive seems to be acting internal. Puzzled, I then inserted a SanDisk Ultra SDHC card (I and placed
a file on it and this as well took my file from my PC desktop and transferred, not copied, it on the card. Now, even more baffled, I tried placing something from my Documents folder and, voila, it copied, not transferred the files. I am not sure why this
started happening all of a sudden. As stated with XP and Win7 or before today with Win 10 I could transfer from my desktop or anywhere from my computer to an external hard drive or USB flash card/stick and it would simply copy, not transfer. Anyone have any
idea of what am I missing or doing incorrectly? Is there some Setting somewhere I need to change? Appreciate any assistance.

 

Missing desktop

I ran out of space on my hard drive, so I moved a bunch of stuff over to a external hard drive.

Then I disconnected my external and shut off my computer. In the morning I turned on my computer on and my desktop was blank, and an error popup displayed saying that the E:......(enter directory/file name)/desktop could not be found. I plugged in my external,
navigated to the path described, dragged (moved) to PC's desktop, disconnected, and blam, blank desktop. I tried going to user,..., appdata, and dropping a copy of the desktop in there but still does nothing.

any help would be appreciated.

 

Keep in mind there's always a difference between the actual size of data and the size used on the HDD. It has to do with the cluster size chosen when formatting the HDD or a partition, the larger the cluster size and the smaller size of files will create 'slack' space [wasted space] and there's nothing that can be done about that. Regardless of the file size it will take 1 or more clusters for a file and if a file is too large it will take more clusters. Cannot put 2 files in the same cluster otherwise there will be data corruption and lose the file/s. If have a large number of small files a small cluster size choice would be okay but requires reformatting. The default for NTFS is 4096KB so if you have a 760Byte icon file it wastes quite a bit of space.

 

That's good info, but I don't think that explains why the total number of files and folders differ between the original and the 2 copies (see attachment)..

Also, how can I easily compare the folders and spot the differences? I've got beyond compare 4 but I didn't figure out how to use it yet.. Is there an easier way?

 

Perhaps you are not authorized to some of the files you are trying to copy?

You could try to copy it with robocopy and it can generate a log file saying what if failed to copy.

This command would copy drive D to a folder called "500GB drive backup" on your desktop and make a logfile called copylog.txt also on your desktop.

Code: robocopy d:\ "%userprofile%\desktop\500GB drive backup" /copyall /e /r:0 /log:%userprofile%\desktop\copylog.txt[/quote] You'll get a log something like this saying what it couldn't copy and why: Code: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROBOCOPY :: Robust File Copy for Windows ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Started : 29 December, 2015 11:35:17 Source : d:\ Dest : C:\Users\Hali\Desktop\500GB drive backup\ Files : *.* Options : *.* /S /E /COPYALL /R:0 /W:30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ New Dir 1 e:\ New File 200.0 m pagefile.sys 0.0% 0.5% 1.0% 99.5% 100% New Dir 0 e:\$RECYCLE.BIN\ New Dir 1 e:\$RECYCLE.BIN\S-1-5-21-1027584776-2358194297-2548917410-1001\ New File 129 desktop.ini 0% 100% New Dir 1 e:\$RECYCLE.BIN\S-1-5-21-2602478595-2806783560-1643973225-1001\ New File 129 desktop.ini 0% 100% New Dir 1 e:\$RECYCLE.BIN\S-1-5-21-3178208141-977810998-1597272411-1001\ New File 129 desktop.ini 0% 100% New Dir 1 e:\$RECYCLE.BIN\S-1-5-21-3244269357-763748866-2916749009-1009\ New File 129 desktop.ini 0% 100% New Dir 1 e:\$RECYCLE.BIN\S-1-5-21-3536341058-2341531926-3888982254-1001\ New File 129 desktop.ini 0% 100% New Dir 1 e:\$RECYCLE.BIN\S-1-5-21-3536341058-2341531926-3888982254-500\ New File 129 desktop.ini 0% 100% New Dir 0 e:\10\ New Dir 3 e:\System Volume Information\ New File 76 IndexerVolumeGuid 2015/12/29 11:36:48 ERROR 5 (0x00000005) Copying File e:\System Volume Information\IndexerVolumeGuid Access is denied. New File 20480 tracking.log 2015/12/29 11:36:48 ERROR 5 (0x00000005) Copying File e:\System Volume Information\tracking.log Access is denied. New File 12 WPSettings.dat 2015/12/29 11:36:48 ERROR 5 (0x00000005) Copying File e:\System Volume Information\WPSettings.dat Access is denied. 0% 30% 60% 91% 100% ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Total Copied Skipped Mismatch FAILED Extras Dirs : 14 14 0 0 0 0 Files : 17 14 0 0 3 0 Bytes : 205.70 m 205.68 m 0 0 20.0 k 0 Times : 0:01:30 0:00:00 0:00:00 0:01:30 Speed : 1191569016 Bytes/sec. Speed : 68182.126 MegaBytes/min. Ended : 29 December, 2015 11:36:48[/quote]

 

Have you used Microsoft's SyncToy?

Download SyncToy 2.1 from Official Microsoft Download Center

 

For new SyncToy users, this excellent tutorial on our sister site the Seven Forums helps to get started with it: SyncToy - Windows 7 Help Forums