Mission Critical MP3 transfers. Safe Mode? Total Commander?

Mike14 · 29 Jun 2013

Hi All!
I'm a DJ and am trying to consolidate all my music onto one hard drive.

Back in XP, I never had any problems with file transfers, but windows 7 has been hell for me, with file transfers seeming to complete as expected, but later finding mp3s totally corrupt and unplayable.

I will be attaching the same drive to different systems (some W7, some XP), and I was hoping for tips on making sure my files are intact.

Is total commander a good bet for this?

Has anyone experienced what I'm talking about and found good work arounds?

Thanks for any tips!

M.:)

whs · 29 Jun 2013

Hmm, never heard about a problem like that. Question is - how do you transfer the files ??

I have transferred hundreds of files to a dozen different external disks and have yet to see the first corrupted file.

Mike14 · 29 Jun 2013

whs,
you must be very lucky or smart or both

I usually use windows built in explorer, drag and drop folders. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in my problems though, as I have done some searches and heard of others experiencing similar problems..

Here is many people talking about the same issues:
Windows 7 Explorer may corrupt MP3 files - Tales from the Crypto

Anyone who has these problems and found solutions, much thanks!

M.

LMiller7 · 29 Jun 2013

Be sure you do a copy and not a move of the files. Moving the only copy of an important file is foolhardy, yet it happens all the time. And be very sure you have at least one backup copy of all important files, 2 or more backup copies if the files are of particular importance.

whs · 29 Jun 2013

Try this 'Copy to Folder' from the context menu.

Context Menu - Add Copy To Folder and Move To Folder

Mike14 · 29 Jun 2013

Thanks Guys.. Good tips!

fireberd · 29 Jun 2013

Good point on having more than one "backup copy". I have a home recording studio and I have recording projects on 3 different drives. Then when I do the final mixdowns, I make two "master studio" CD copies.

Alejandro85 · 29 Jun 2013

Never had a file corruption issue of any file at all because of Windows Explorer. I may consider the chance that the drive itself has some problems and files don't store correctly there (in the age where diskettes ruled the world, that was an everyday issue, no matter how you did the copy). Just in case, do a full drive check to make sure it's not damaged physically. My (pseudo) solution back then was to make multiple copies of important files, so if one fails, the other may be in good shape.

If the problem is frequent, you may want to generate MD5/SHA1 checksums to validate file integrity before and after the copy. That will not prevent the corruption from occurring, but you can detect it earlier if it happens. A program that can easily do that is HashCheck (HashCheck Shell Extension).

Mike14 · 29 Jun 2013

Thanks Alejandro!

That's a good tip with the checksums.. I will do that after copies, before deleting source :)

this is a great forum.. Thanks to all for all the responses today!

M.

bobafetthotmail · 30 Jun 2013

When doing serious file moving jobs, FastCopy helps.
Apart from being faster and far less resource intensive than Windows's own copy and paste, it can verify the files to make sure they have been transferred correctly, and tells you of any errors encountered, plus the usual "relpace if newer"/"replace anyway"/"whatever" options. So in case file transfer fails you can simply click "copy" again and it will transfer again only the files that didn't make it the first time.

Here the official site with download links and usage instructions. Don't be afraid by the japanese download site (the author is Japanese), the program and usage instructions are in English.

There are other programs like TeraCopy, but the above is what I would recommend. Interface is a bit basic, but it's stable and reliable. You can also drag and drop folders in its path fields.

Anyway, getting tons of corrupted files on transfer is not a good sign. If it happens with the Fastcopy too, I'd start checking if the drives/cabling/whatever is ok or is failing.