Intelligent file copy/move software?

Question

Is there any intelligent (and-well integrated in the system) replacement for file copy/move ?

By intelligent, I mean :

• on conflict, do not prompt the user while stopping the copy but prompt and, in background, copy all files that are not in conflict,
• again on conflict, avoid prompting multiples times the user, propose a button to solve next conflicts or, better, propose a single prompt showing all conflicts and allow to chose what to do for each conflicts,
• show an unique copy/move window (as in Os X or Gnome) for multiple transfert and allow user to pause operations and to queue them (wait for the current copy to finish before launching the next one),
• do not abort the copy on error but save it and so, allow user to try again later (like download manager in Firefox),
• queue operations when it's better to queue them (when you launch multiple copy on same hard drive, it's quicker to wait until the current is finished instead of parallels file operations).

I'm interested in solutions for all major Os (Windows, Mac OS X and Ubuntu).

Note : I'm looking for a replacement for native Windows/Os X/Linux copy/move operations. So rsync seems not quite adequate for that use.

Answer 1

TeraCopy is rated Hive Five Winner for best alternative file copier.
I'd say it rates pretty high on your scale-of-intelligence.
However, its limited to Windows platforms.

Answer 2

Perhaps the most intelligent file copier would be a sync between folders.

This allows you to determine which folder is master or slave (or have it sync both ways). It won't stop or prompt on conflicts.

The largest downside would be that you have to specify the folders every time you want to move files, but when you want to process a large batch, it's probably worth the effort.

Some tools for syncing: SyncBack or SyncToy (kudos to the people from the other topic)

Answer 3

I'm not sure if there's anything that does everything that you're asking (and I only speak for *nix OS's) but rsync has a lot going for it in terms of monitoring for incremental changes and thus dealing with conflicts. The downside is that its a beast to use, but I employ a great open-source backup solution on OS X called LBackup which is basically a configuration wrapper on rsync. There's a guy called Mike Bombich who's done a lot of development in the area who's site has lots of good info... maybe worth investigating in pusuit of your quest.

Answer 4

Supercopier is pretty neat.

It handles resuming, queuing, "solve next conflicts" resolution... Plus, it's rather lightweight and unobstrusive.

Answer 5

Total Commander all the way for me, comes with a plethora of copy/move options:

Rename the new or or existing traget file, auto-rename source, auto-rename target, overwrite (all, only older, all older and of same age), copy all larger files (overwrite smaller), copy all smaller files (overwrite larger), compare (by content), append.

Answer 6

I tried jfilesync, it works well for me, it's java so it's cross platform.

Answer 7

I use SynchronizeIt 3.5, mostly because contrary to all the others I've tried on WinXP (including several named above), it keeps all timestamps, including the creation and modification dates of directories, which for me is very important. It copies all files without stopping on errors, and shows all the errors at the end. If the copy is aborted, it simply checks which files have been copied and copies only what's missing. It's not perfect though, as it sometimes generates corrupted copies, specifically with files downloaded with softwares like FlashGet or Orbit Downloader (I just posted a new question regarding this issue). I recently discovered the "/DCOPY:T" parameter in Robocopy which also preserves all timestamps (requires version XP026 of Robocopy).