XYplorer Beta Club

Hi all, I've just discovered Xyplorer and like most of you, I think it's outstanding. I love the right-click backup function and am about to re-organise all my files using it (I'm a stickler for maintaining file creation dates).

I do have a couple of questions though - please excuse me if the answers appear elsewhere or have been discussed in depth previously. I have searched the forum and manual but the terminology I'm using hasn't yet let me strike the motherlode of information that is probably out there.

My question is basically about large, intensive and time-consuming file procedures (copy/delete/backup), and how to set up/execute them in such a way that I can be sure that the program won't hit a read-only file at the start of a 2TB copy and idle for eight hours overnight waiting for me to click 'yes'. This hasn't happened to me with Xyplorer yet, so it isn't a criticism of Xyplorer at all, but I want to know as much as I can about it's abilities.

I'm hoping there's some kind of 'robust queuing system' that I can place the desired operations into (eg. "backup c:\data to d:\data_BU") which will then check for any issues the procedure may come across (read only files, system files, all the other stuff that usually causes stoppages) and either deal with them first, or ignore all of them until the end - meanwhile ploughing through the set task from start to finish. And while it's at it, keep track of what's been done and what hasn't, so if anything fails the operation can be picked up again and continued.

This functionality from the gui would make me explode with relief at no longer having to deal with fragile, teetering Windows Explorer-style operations that might pause indefinitely at any second, or fail and leave you with a half-finished mess of duplicated folders and files everywhere, and nothing to save you but a single undo that may or may not actually undo anything.

I haven't delved into scripting yet, and if this kind of thing is possible via scripts that would also be awesome.

I hope some of you can see what I'm getting at and can help out.

Cheers

Hello and welcome!

I give you a short answer (to continue coding... ).

1) un-interruptable logged file procedures (for copying files from A to B, not moving or other sorts of file operations) are already possible now using the "backup" operation. You can configure the behavior on name collision or other errors in Configuration | File Operations | Backup Operations. There are also options for logging.

2) In upcoming version 10.00 you can optionally replace the shell-based copy by such a fully configurable native copy (as is "backup" already now), which is talked about here in the forum under the name "XYcopy 2.0". In the program I will probably call it "Custom Copy" - not sure yet. So whenever you press Ctrl+V or drag files from here to there, the native copy will set in instead of the Windows shell copy.

Version 10.00 will also have a nice progress dialog with progress bars, estimated remaining time, speed calculations etc. ... the usual stuff. I'm working on that right now...

Don

Hi Don,

Thanks for your quick reply. I will go back over the backup options and familiarise myself with them - likewise XYCopy 2's features.

Can't wait for v10, XYplorer is an excellent program with excellent support.

passed by and read the post. the proposition from above is real interesting:

JJR wrote:check for any issues the procedure may come across (read only files, system files, all the other stuff that usually causes stoppages) and either deal with them first, or ignore all of them until the end

hope XYcopy2.0 will have such ability. or maybe have a feature in preconfigure operations behaviour, to make such "go to the end and wait for user decision"/"show me all decision-needed-files first".

eil wrote:passed by and read the post. the proposition from above is real interesting:

JJR wrote:check for any issues the procedure may come across (read only files, system files, all the other stuff that usually causes stoppages) and either deal with them first, or ignore all of them until the end

hope XYcopy2.0 will have such ability. or maybe have a feature in preconfigure operations behaviour, to make such "go to the end and wait for user decision"/"show me all decision-needed-files first".

Yes, refinements like this will be possible. Like always, I'll start with a basic approach and see what comes up.

Thanks to XYplorer and Don (admin), in 2015.

I too have had this annoying nightmare in Windows 7. Microsoft's native copy function grinds to a halt, midway through a job, with no way to know what did and did not get done. In my case it was because my technical library includes a lot of overlength strings (filenames and/or paths) due to many downloads of technical data over the years. There oughta' be a law against sales professionals composing web pages sometimes. (Typical real example: "Pro Line Rotary Phase Converters Archives - North America Phase Converters & Electrical Supply.html" -- hey, why didn't they stick their address in that filename too?) I know to watch out for these clowns now, but Windows XP and my browser cheerfully let me save all sorts of that stuff over the years. The chickens only came home to roost when I went to do some major platform updates. With Microsoft's usual brilliance, "improved" Windows 7 Pro grinds to a halt and says I can try saving to a shorter path. Which I would do, but their dialog only gives me two choices: "skip" the file or "cancel" the whole job. Then, helpfully, Windows 7 has trunctated the filename and path in the copy dialog in the background, so even if I wanted to start writing down all those bad filenames I can't really see them anyway. You'd think that, having made the brilliant innovation of taking away almost all my layout control over individual windows on my desktop that I had in XP and making every new window open where the previous one was (the moral equivalent of replacing your steering wheel with your headlight switch when you go to turn on the lights) they'd at least have dealt with this long standing file handling issue by now.

Thankfully now there's xyP. Using a simple little script from highend.web.de I was able to find the problem areas, but with a stick it was difficult: going from a stick (forget Microsoft's horrible networking), the path was inevitably shorter at the source than the destination. So I had to dummy the path up longer on the stick and then use the script to find all the overlong sources. I was hoping that, unlike Windows Explorer, xyP wuld have a utility that would precisely log all file copy failures for later attention and carry on with the rest of the job. I'll be trying Backup out. Anyone with any further tips and tricks, I'll be much appreciative.
Thanks all
DS