Back to the Days of DOS

Rick C wrote:
> I used to know DOS pretty well.  I am copying a lot of files to a
> flash drive for backup and need to verify what has been transferred
> by comparing directories.  A simple count is sufficient.  Trouble is
> I'm getting incomplete data.
>
> I'm using a DIR command to a file, then examining the files to see
> how many files are missing.  My text editor can do a diff if the
> counts don't match.
>
> When I check the total number in the properties it is far more than
> the number I'm seeing in the DIR command.  I can't understand why
> that is happening.
>
> Anyone know of a limitation of the DIR command on the number of files
> reported in a given directory?
>
> dir /b /on /s >dir.txt

Also, use TeraCopy if doing the copy via the GUI, or XCOPY or Robocopy 
if using the CLI.

-- 
 Defund the Thought Police 

On Saturday, November 6, 2021 at 11:29:42 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 06/11/2021 03:26, Rick C wrote: 
> > On Friday, November 5, 2021 at 10:44:37 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote: 
> >> Rick C wrote: 
> >>> I used to know DOS pretty well. I am copying a lot of files to a 
> >>> flash drive for backup and need to verify what has been transferred 
> >>> by comparing directories. A simple count is sufficient. Trouble is 
> >>> I'm getting incomplete data. 
> >>> 
> >>> I'm using a DIR command to a file, then examining the files to see 
> >>> how many files are missing. My text editor can do a diff if the 
> >>> counts don't match. 
> >>> 
> >>> When I check the total number in the properties it is far more than 
> >>> the number I'm seeing in the DIR command. I can't understand why 
> >>> that is happening. 
> >>> 
> >>> Anyone know of a limitation of the DIR command on the number of files 
> >>> reported in a given directory? 
> >>> 
> >>> dir /b /on /s >dir.txt 
> >>> 
> >> Depends on the version IIRC. Early DOS versions had sharply limited 
> >> number of entries in \, and maybe subdirectories as sell. 
> >> 
> >> I used to really like DOS 3.3 BITD. 
> > 
> > This isn't really DOS, it's Windows command. Hard to imagine they'd impose such a limitation.
> Sadly it isn't hard to imagine them making that sort of mistake at all.
> > 
> > I did a Google search on how to do this and someone posted a PowerShell script. I couldn't get it to work because a command was not present on my machine. It wasn't worth it to me to figure that out.
> I prefer to do a CRC of every file on the destination against every file 
> on the source. It has the advantage of verifying that the contents are 
> (probably) the same in each place and readable too. 
> 
> I have seen way too many unreadable backups where the directory entries 
> all looked fine but the file contents themselves were scrambled. 
> 
> Winmerge isn't too bad at comparing files and directories to find any 
> differences between them (and it is free). 
> 
> https://winmerge.org/?lang=en 

I'll give it a try.   Free is my favorite type of freeware.  I'll need to start over with the flash drive.  I forgot to format it as an alternate format from the default FAT32, like exFAT for example.  I always discover this when it won't copy files larger than 4 GB which is well into the process.  That's ok, I've got time... 

-- 

Rick C.

+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209