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I was trying to copy a large amount of data from one drive to another drive in order to back it up. I did this simply by CTRL+C the top-level directories I wanted from one drive, then CTRL+P in the drive for backing that up, all within Windows Explorer. I let this process run overnight and upon return, I had the error that a folder could not be transferred due to file path length. I pressed skip each time to see how extensive the problem was and there were only 3 folders that were not moved for this reason.

The problem is, I don't know which folders exactly were not transferred. If I knew which directories couldn't be copied over the first time around, I could go address their path length or use (what I've only now learned about) robocopy to copy them. How can I know exactly which directories did not transfer? W

hat I copied consists of 1.5TB of data with many branching directories, so I doubt I can do this manually. Is there any log of what files were skipped, or a relatively easy way to compare the two top-level folders and see exactly what's missing?

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  • Run a robocopy with /l, and it will tell you within seconds which files are missing at the targte location.
    – Aganju
    Commented Aug 20, 2018 at 13:41
  • Thanks @Aganju I'll give that a try. If you post that as an answer I'll upvote and if it works, accept. Could use a little more detail, but I think I get it.
    – cr0
    Commented Aug 20, 2018 at 14:13
  • That only worked on files in the parent directory and did not do anything in child directories it contains. Will keep tinkering with this though, looks like /E will do the trick to capture subdirectories.
    – cr0
    Commented Aug 20, 2018 at 14:16

1 Answer 1

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You can use Robocopy with /L to get a list of all files that are not equal.

Here is a line that I use (forgot what most qualifiers mean, but ROBOCOPY /? explains them). Make sure to keep the /L, otherwise, it starts copying things.

ROBOCOPY /E /Z /DCOPY:T /PURGE /FP "X:\...\SourceDir" "Y:\...\TargetDir" /L

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  • This gives me a long list of outputs, with a summary at the end that indicates tens of thousands of files were skipped (since they exist in both source & target) and 3 dirs/20 files were copied. Still, I don't have a list of what files would be copied (which weren't copied the first time around!)
    – cr0
    Commented Aug 20, 2018 at 15:19
  • I guess maybe I don't need a list as I can use robocopy without the /L option and it would actually copy those files. But, I'd still like to know which those files were to double check them and address the excessively long paths problem.
    – cr0
    Commented Aug 20, 2018 at 15:19
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    While I think this method worked to copy the missing files over, overcoming the path length error, it doesn't answer my original question of how to identify which files have excessively long paths
    – cr0
    Commented Aug 23, 2018 at 13:45

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