Missing subdirectories when copying files Windows 7

[crazychicken]

I had a Windows XP machine that couldn't boot because of some kind of driver issue, so I decided to format. Of course I wanted to backup my data, so I put the drive in a Windows 7 computer with a whole ton of free space, and decided "eh, I'll just copy the entire drive and go through and pick out my data when I copy it back to the fresh install instead of doing it now." I.e. I did "select all" -> "copy" from the old drive, and "paste" in a folder on the new drive. I went to spot check some files to make sure everything was there, and it was not! Namely, the "MyUser" folder in Documents and Settings/ was not there! I went and looked on the old drive and it (of course) was there! I was able to copy this folder manually, but why the heck would it not have been copied when I copied the entire "Documents and Settings" folder (which was a subdirectory of the whole drive that I copied)?

Can anyone explain this?

Thanks,

David

 

[Nothinman]

Windows Explorer is unreliable for large copies, you should really use something more robust like robocopy.

 

[Dessert Tears]

It could be related to [thread=2259101]this user access permission thread[/thread] from yesterday.

 

[xSauronx]

Windows Explorer is unreliable for large copies, you should really use something more robust like robocopy.

the first thing i install on most any windows system i will be using is teracopy. i believe some of the file copy issues are handled better in windows 8 but iirc still not to the same degree that another program will help manage transfers.

 

[Paperlantern]

Windows 7 handles permissions and user folders differently than win xp. For example, if you are logged into a machine as user a, who is an administrator, youncan see user b's profile (and manipulate it). If you log off and back on as user b who is not an administrator, you can only manipulate your own. 7 boxes treat user folders from foreign file systems as if you were a non administrator, unless of course the system is on a domain and you are an administrator but that is another ball of wax.

A third party file manager will probably help here, also OSs like Linux ignore these attributes and will allow copies or deleting of all user data because it just doesn't care about windows and ntfs permissions.

Taking ownership of the directory prior to copying will probably fix the problem in lieu of a third party file manager or Linux machine to do the copying.

 

[hhhd1]

this happened to me before, and resulted in loosing some very important files.

 

[Nothinman]

Windows 7 handles permissions and user folders differently than win xp. For example, if you are logged into a machine as user a, who is an administrator, youncan see user b's profile (and manipulate it). If you log off and back on as user b who is not an administrator, you can only manipulate your own. 7 boxes treat user folders from foreign file systems as if you were a non administrator, unless of course the system is on a domain and you are an administrator but that is another ball of wax.

A third party file manager will probably help here, also OSs like Linux ignore these attributes and will allow copies or deleting of all user data because it just doesn't care about windows and ntfs permissions.

Taking ownership of the directory prior to copying will probably fix the problem in lieu of a third party file manager or Linux machine to do the copying.

No, Win7 and XP behave the same with regards to NTFS permissions. MS keeps changing the UI periodically which can be confusing, but the model hasn't changed since the original release of NT/NTFS, the capabilities have just expanded within that time. One thing that has changed is the defaults for new NTFS filesystems, I think in the past they were Everyone: Full Control and at some point they were changed to Administrators: Full Control with Everyone: Read/Execute. I just tested with an old XP VM I have here and a new disk was created with proper, restrictive permissions.

And if you want to use Linux to do the copying you don't need a second PC, just a CD or USB stick from which to run a Live distribution.

Now if the files are encrypted with NTFS encryption that's a whole other situation and you can't hope to recover them without the original install because that holds the cert and private key used to encrypt them.

 

[Paperlantern]

No, Win7 and XP behave the same with regards to NTFS permissions. MS keeps changing the UI periodically which can be confusing, but the model hasn't changed since the original release of NT/NTFS, the capabilities have just expanded within that time. One thing that has changed is the defaults for new NTFS filesystems, I think in the past they were Everyone: Full Control and at some point they were changed to Administrators: Full Control with Everyone: Read/Execute. I just tested with an old XP VM I have here and a new disk was created with proper, restrictive permissions.

And if you want to use Linux to do the copying you don't need a second PC, just a CD or USB stick from which to run a Live distribution.

Now if the files are encrypted with NTFS encryption that's a whole other situation and you can't hope to recover them without the original install because that holds the cert and private key used to encrypt them.

Ah, you are correct, I forgot XP had that capability, I've never used it. Though I thought I recall being able to turn it on if you want? Like a check box somewhere that says "Keep files private"? Or a question in a wizard somewhere that says "Would you like your (or "this user's") files to be private?" In which case non administrators would not be able to either see them or browse to them.

I just realized I don't think i have ever used an XP machine without admin rights before, or at least not without being ABLE to obtain them easily either by a quick log off and back on upon remembering i wasnt an administrator and i would need to do something admin related or just because it was my machine and I was always an admin.

 

[Nothinman]

Ah, you are correct, I forgot XP had that capability, I've never used it. Though I thought I recall being able to turn it on if you want? Like a check box somewhere that says "Keep files private"? Or a question in a wizard somewhere that says "Would you like your (or "this user's") files to be private?" In which case non administrators would not be able to either see them or browse to them.

I just realized I don't think i have ever used an XP machine without admin rights before, or at least not without being ABLE to obtain them easily either by a quick log off and back on upon remembering i wasnt an administrator and i would need to do something admin related or just because it was my machine and I was always an admin.

I believe the private files option encrypted your profile with EFS, although I'm not 100% sure. But the default NTFS permissions are the same regardless, you always have to change them after the fact in order to make them more permissive and that's a good thing.

 

[Rifter]

terracopy FTW, windows explorer FTL.