We are in the process of a large archiving project that requires user’s documents on their PCs to be stored on a server, and to perform the file-transfers, we use Robocopy. After the copy has been completed, we right-click on a base directory for that user, and check the file properties to ensure that the source and destinations have the same number / size of files. Unfortunately, I have been sent on a few wild-goose chases as I have tried to hunt down missing files.
A few times when there was a difference in the number of files that the Properties Window was showing, I’d navigate through the directory structure to get at the problem file only to find that it appears that all of the files were copied (sort of; I’ll explain below). For example, when going to Properties on a buried folder, the source would say 6 files while on the destination it says only 5. If I then proceed to open up that folder, I see 6 files in both the source and destination. I did notice that one of the files on the destination would say 0 files on the Properties Window, if I right clicked on that file. Furthermore, I am unable to rename the file (either by two single-clicks on the name or by trying to right-click (the rename option doesn’t appear in the context menu)) nor can I open the file. One other peculiarity that I’ve witnessed is that if I do a Ctrl+A to highlight all of the files in the folder and then try to open the Properties Window, I’ll get a different number of files depending upon which file in the block I right click on. The problem file was located on the top of the folder list, so if I right-clicked on the bottom file in the list, the Properties will just list 1 file in the block. Right-clicking the next one above (the penultimate file in the list) shows 2, the one above that shows 3, etc. except for the top / problem file where it will list 0 files in the block.
I addition to being unable to rename or open the file, I’ve also found that I am unable to re-copy over that file using a normal drag-n-drop or Copy-Paste operation. This got me thinking… I know from the Robocopy reference that there is the /256 flag for the 256-character length limitation. I was wondering if all of these issues is because of this limitation (or some other limitation) in path-name length. I’m assuming that Robocopy is able to ignore this limitation, and so copying the file using Robocopy will indeed copy the file over. If that is the case, then is there a way to verify the number of files to show the true number instead of relying on the Properties Window?