Ycopy

Computer/IT technicians, mainly. Or anyone routinely faced with the sometimes arduous task of trying to copy data from a client or colleagues old drive to a new one. It is also has other uses however.

Ycopy is a useful utility for the intended purpose. It is not a data recovery tool. It was originally written for and is used at our local computer store. It is not a cure all. If the original drive is physically broken in any way then use of Ycopy will most likely not help. It makes no attempt to restore corrupt files. It is however very good at making the job of copying existing data to a new drive a much more predictable and less time consuming operation than it can otherwise turn out to be.

Well if you've read this far chances are you may already be aware of the problem. You put the old hard disk in your machine along with the new drive which is to receive the old data. Then you set it copying using standard explorer cut and paste. This is fine as long as there are no problems with the file system on the original disk. But...as soon as the copy in progress finds a file which can't be copied (for whatever reason, maybe it's open but locked for exclusive access or perhaps corrupt in some way) the copy process stops. Leaving you with the time consuming and rather mundane task of trying to workout where and why the file copy stopped and what files remain to be copied.

Ycopy will copy the files from one drive to another just like a regular copy. The difference being that when it encounters a file that it can't copy (for whatever reason) it doesn't just give up. Instead it makes a note of the file(s) that couldn't be copied and moves on to the next one. When the copy process completes you are left with a printable report that you can then give to the client detailing the files which were unable to be copied. Making the job not only easier and much more predictable for you (you set it going and leave it to get on with the job, no more wasted time poring over directories and files) but more professional from the customers perspective (not only did you copy all their precious data that you could but you've given them a detailed list of files that were unable to be saved due to problems with the original disks file system.)