Large File Copy Tool accross Flaky Connection

windows synchronization wide-area-network copying

6,819

Solution 1

The native windows tools to do this are xcopy /z and using BITS. Xcopy /z is pretty self explanatory. Bitsadmin is how you manage a bits tranfer in windows 2003, howver if you can install powershell v2 it contains cmdlet modules to do bits transfers. See Transferring (Large) Files Using BITs. My favorite exe tool is XXcopy.

Solution 2

Use something like rar to create an archive that can be broken up into chunks, say 100MB. Use xcopy or robocopy to copy the files across.

robocopy source dest *.rar /w:30 /r:30 /z

will wait 30 seconds when the connection drops and retry 30 times.

I've used that when I need to copy a multi-gig file across a link that won't stay up long enough to do the copy.

Solution 3

My friend suggested I use KillCopy for this purpose. It works well - its user interface is a bit clunky, but it's a drag-and-drop solution (assuming you're using a destination you can access in Explorer).

Solution 4

FTP client with queue function (with auto retries). Try SmartFTP or FileZilla.

Solution 5

curl has several retry options (along with being able to specify infinite retries).

rsync doesn't have any built in retry schemes, you could wrap it in a script to do infinite retries until it completed successfully.

View more solutions

6,819

jimconstable

Engineer/Developer

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

jimconstable over 1 year

I am looking to copy some large files accross a flaky WAN connection. Is there a tool I can use which will auto resume when the network fall over briefly and let me manually resume if I have to fix it manually?
- Joseph almost 15 years
  
  What OS is this for?
- jimconstable almost 15 years
  
  The os is windows
jimconstable almost 15 years

how do i use filezilla on two unc paths?
pauska almost 15 years

FileZilla is an FTP client, so you'll need a FTP server on one of the servers to use it.
russellpierce almost 12 years

Robocopy would also be a built-in (for some versions of Windows) solution. But XXcopy is probably preferable.
raja almost 12 years

@drknexus the nice thing about using bits is that all connection problems are auto-resolved so even if you reboot the client (or server naturally) during a transfer it will auto-resume the transfer. I've had transfers run into patch windows and this came in real handy.
Nick.McDermaid almost 4 years

That link no longer works but I'm intrigued with using bittorrent to copy large files in a private capacity