Favourite File Manager?

[mta]

I've just discovered the joys of XYplorer and I must say, it has replaced the old Windows Explorer admirably (so far).

It reminds me of what you could once do with XTree Gold (how many of us can put their arms up there)

 

So firstly, I was wondering if anybody has any better/favourite file managers?

And secondly, any feature (good or bad) that XYplorer has that you may have come across?

 

Thanks.

[Guest Keatah]

That's too much stuff. (reading page now)

 

I use what comes with Windows and have developed a style of working that is fast an efficient and available on every computer. I fear if I become dependent on a 3rd party utility that it would diminish my ability to work on systems that don't have it. Thus learn the common denominator in and out.

 

The extra functions it provides I have freeware 3rd party utilities for. These typically stay out of the way unless I need them.

 

I also don't like paying for something like this. Not that I'm a freeloader or anything like that, I spend top dollar for my trade tools. But for pushing files around whatever comes with the system is good enough.

[hazelnut]

Like Keatah I use what comes with Windows (boring I know) I know how it works, and I can usually find anything I look for

 

mta what particular feature of that file manager do you enjoy?

[Willy2]

I use Windows Explorer that comes/came with Win XP and Win 7. Yes, I agree with Hazelnut, boring. Besides that I use ExplorerXP in about 10% of the time when I want to access/retrieve files in/from folders that can't be accessed with Windows Explorer. ExplorerXP goes beyond where Win Explorer stops.

 

If I could I would transfer the Win XP file manager to my Win 7 laptop. Win XP's file manager has some features I sorely miss in Win 7. Does anyone know how to "copy"/install the Win XP file manager to Win 7 ?? Perhaps Superfast has a solution ?

 

Are there better filemanagers than win Explorer ? I am open to suggestions.

[Winapp2.ini]

I have used XYplorer, Explorer+ (or ++, one or the other) and Directory Opus.

 

Time and time again, I come back to plain ol' Windows Explorer with the addition of QTTabBar.

[Guest Keatah]

What about using Classic Shell and only installing Classic Explorer?

http://classicshell....s.html#explorer

http://classicshell....ge.net/faq.html

 

While the XP Explorer can be manhandled into somewhat working in Windows 7 - a bastardized solution fer'sure.. I strongly prefer Classic Shell for a number of behind-the-scenes technical reasons.

 

And all this "explorer" stuff got me thinking.. What if you got XP mode rolling. Then goto the OTHER section and "C" on YOUR COMPUTER. I bet you can browse your "7" machine with XP explorer. I'm on my mobile at a crashed datacenter right now in the middle of some recovery operations. But somebody want to check that out?

[login123]

@ Keatah

". . .What if you got XP mode rolling. Then goto the OTHER section and "C" on YOUR COMPUTER. I bet you can browse your "7" machine with XP explorer. I'm on my mobile at a crashed datacenter right now in the middle of some recovery operations. But somebody want to check that out?"

 

Not sure what you're suggesting here, but i am booted to win xp, dual booted, other HD has win 7. The win 7 hd is not visible using ExplorerXP, nor the explorer.exe native to win xp, nor the portable version of XYplorer.

 

I'll try anything until the smoke starts. What else?

 

Edit: Have to go. Playtime interrupted.

Will be a while getting back, but will experiment then.

[Guest Keatah]

XTree Gold, eh? awesome! Now there's a remake called ztree, but it is not free.

[DennisD]

For moving and copying files on my XP system, I use "TeraCopy" because of really necessary features missing from Windows Explorer.

 

Pause and resume file transfers. Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click.

 

Error recovery. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer.

 

Shell integration. TeraCopy can completely replace Explorer copy and move functions, allowing you work with files as usual.

 

 

http://www.filehippo...nload_teracopy/

 

I can also fully verify each and every transfer, get a constant visual indication of progress, and as stated above, it very conveniently replaces the Windows Explorer "Copy Cut and Move" right click entries.

 

Windows Explorer is still active for opening windows and viewing, but if I have some complicated copies or moves between multiple drives I fire up "Q-Dir".

 

http://www.softwareo...=Freeware/Q-Dir

 

Having any combination of up to four windows in a nice tidy configuration is way better than trying to open 4 separate windows which you usually have to drag around.

 

TeraCopy still controls all the drag and drop or normal file moving operations in Q-Dir.

[Andavari]

http://www.filehippo...nload_teracopy/

 

I can also fully verify each and every transfer

 

I use a command prompt with either copy or xcopy with the verify parameter: /v

Although Windows even when transferring via Explorer will notify if there's errors during a transfer, it may however give some rather not very useful info though.

[mta]

mta what particular feature of that file manager do you enjoy?

 

only been playing just over a week now.

 

Pros so far;

tabbed exploring (should give SuperFast a smile)

Catalog View, you can setup your Favourite locations

inbuilt TeraCopy equivalent (i was using teracopy, but this seems to do the same inbuilt)

 

Still playing but I do hear the main point, going to another PC and having to go back to the tried and true Windows Explorer will be a downer.

[Winapp2.ini]

For moving and copying files on my XP system, I use "TeraCopy" because of really necessary features missing from Windows Explorer.

 

 

 

http://www.filehippo...nload_teracopy/

 

I can also fully verify each and every transfer, get a constant visual indication of progress, and as stated above, it very conveniently replaces the Windows Explorer "Copy Cut and Move" right click entries.

 

Windows Explorer is still active for opening windows and viewing, but if I have some complicated copies or moves between multiple drives I fire up "Q-Dir".

 

http://www.softwareo...=Freeware/Q-Dir

 

Having any combination of up to four windows in a nice tidy configuration is way better than trying to open 4 separate windows which you usually have to drag around.

 

TeraCopy still controls all the drag and drop or normal file moving operations in Q-Dir.

 

I love TeraCopy!

[Alan_B]

I used Windows native COPY to duplicate my essential partition image backup files from my Secondary Internal HDD to an external USB2 HDD.

The duplicates were NOT - they were the same size but the binary patterns differed and I was NOT aware of a problem until I ran Macrium Verify to validate them.

(I have 40 years experience of computers and my distrust increases year by year).

USB2 is good, but I do not bet my life or my archives on it.

 

Since then I use Teracopy

I appreciate and utilise all that Dennis quoted, and in addition appreciate that :-

As each file is read from source a MD5 hash checksum is computed whilst it is being written to the destination ;

After all files are written it then reads back from the destination and computes the MD5 hash checksum and compares with the value computed for the source ;

After the above the screen shows all that has happened ;

Then a single click will remove all successful results from the screen, leaving only the failures due to "no access etc." or MD5 hash errors,

and after any user actions to obtain access etc. another click will reattempt everything that failed.

When copying a large set of files and folders it will automatically retry 3 times and then SKIP any which are not readable,

and then proceed to continue with all the other files.

[hazelnut]

Don't forget UnstoppableCopier a great tool for those urgent file transfers from a hard drive which might be failing, corrupted or with data reading errors.....see program description.

 

http://www.roadkil.n...hp?ProgramID=29

 

Nice test of file copiers here with results list.

 

FastCopy came out on top

 

http://www.raymond.c...transfer-speed/

[eL_PuSHeR]

Total Commander for me.

[mta]

just found another nice feature.

i've always disliked the way Win7/Vista changed their sort method in Windows Explorer, a change from the good old XP method of doing it.

XYplorer let's you go back, old school style !

 

small feature i know, but good to have it back

[Guest Keatah]

@ ALL:

I suppose using file copy enhancements such as TeraCopy or XYplorer isn't a bad idea. But I've never encountered corruption related to disk transfers except on machines with bad hardware. In which case, file copy operations weren't the only things going wrong. Errors would be happening frequently enough to where the system would misbehave and crash and do all sorts of strange things.

 

The error checking capability in modern HDD is well engineered. A typical spec might be 1-bit misread out of 1,000,000,000,000,000 bits!

 

In easier to understand terms this would be reading the entire contents of your brand new 4TB disk 32 times over. And during the course of doing those 32 reads, 1 single bit might be in error. In reality it's even less. That is smaller than microscopic! And that's just for the disk drive alone - from the head/platter point to the output at data cable connection point. Don't forget there's some error checking on the IDE/SATA interface chip on the motherboard and inbuilt into the O/S itself. Not a great deal, but some.

 

If you look at the S.M.A.R.T. values of a modern disk, you'll see something like Ultra DMA CRC Error Count. This count raises a red flag when the HDD doesn't agree with what comes down the wires. So your drive is doing double duty in not only making sure it itself is accurate, but also that the motherboard is sending coherent data as well.

 

@ Alan_B: You said earlier in the discussion that you had done some comparing of the source and destination and found differences. I would be concerned about why those errors happened. If your system is botching basic disk-2-disk file transfers and needs corrective software, there's a hidden problem. And it's not likely the HDD is the perpetrator.

[Alan_B]

My previous laptop did not have enough USB2 ports for all my needs.

 

My Desktop has far too many ports, including two on the "roof" that I can see and easily access on demand.

(My "always needed/available" USB devices like keyboard/mouse/printer and things I forget are somewhere on the back panel)

 

Macrium created on my secondary internal HDD a partition image backup file of C:\.

I plugged into the rooftop my external backup HDD and used Windows to copy that backup file from secondary to external - no apparent problem.

Then I used Macrium to validate the copy, which would have implied validity of the original.

The copy failed, but I was able to validate the original.

 

On a rampage I created a new folder on the external and copied the entire set of recent archives from the secondary to the internal.

I think that was probably about 20 GB total consisting of two off 6.5 GB Full images and about 12 off Incremental and Differentials between 300 MB and 1.5 GB in size.

Both the 6.5 GB copies had MD5 errors, and half of the small files also had errors.

 

I am convinced that although I had properly and fully inserted the USB2 plug into the socket, the connection was defective.

 

I have subsequently retested and found no problem - I just had a bad connection.

 

The beauty of TeraCopy is that it does NOT assume the copy is good until it has subsequently read the copy.

It does not CORRECT any error but is guaranteed to detect any MD5 hash checksum discrepancy,

and if need be report the problem and retry a couple of times,

and then allow me to fix any access problems and redo the few that fail.

 

N.B.

I do not know which of the two ports might be suspect because they are so close together and I failed to note at the time which was in use,

and of course it could be a wonky USB2 plug or lead.

 

I now am using an eSATA external drive for speed, but again it uses connectors and I still don't trust Windows so I still use Teracopy.

[Winapp2.ini]

just found another nice feature.

i've always disliked the way Win7/Vista changed their sort method in Windows Explorer, a change from the good old XP method of doing it.

XYplorer let's you go back, old school style !

 

small feature i know, but good to have it back

 

I think QTTabBar has a similar feature, but I don't think it is implemented (correctly? fully?) yet.

[Guest Keatah]

@ Alan B:

 

I wonder if there wasn't an error much deeper in the system like in RAM - CPU communications, or if noise from old capacitors caused this.

 

See, a USB connection is more likely to drop out completely and disconnect the device as opposed to flipping random bits.

[hazelnut]

Can I suggest that Alan_B and keatah perhaps continue their discussions of the more tech hardware aspects in hardware perhaps?.

 

let's try to keep this thread more software based.

 

thanks guys

[nodles]

Never used any, haven't really needed a replacement. Maybe I don't have that many (and deep) folder structures etc.. Some things I've replaced a long time ago are Windows' defrag & search (->Defraggler/UltraDefrag/WinContig & Everything). Oh and mediaplayer (never really used WMP) & browser (->mainly MPC HC & Firefox). Also Win firewall -> Comodo.

[Winapp2.ini]

Search Everything has consistently been my favorite search replacement.

[Willy2]

Search Everything has consistently been my favorite search replacement.

 

Everything is not prefect. It overlooks files.

[Winapp2.ini]

Really? I've never had any issues.