How to suppress the error 'There is not enough space on (drive). You may need an additional XXX to copy these files'.

Hello. I'm trying to re-copy a folder that stalled last night. 50% of the files have already been copied. When I copy and paste the folder into the destination, I receive an error that says 'There is not enough space on (drive). You may need an additional XXX top copy these files'. But what Windows is not taking into consideration is the fact that 50% of the files need not be copied. In short, I would be merging the data. Of course, I could go through all my files 1 by 1 and only copy the files that didn't make it last night, but that would take a lot more time. Is there a way to get around this message and ignore it? Thanks.

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Answer

GTS-NJ

Volunteer Moderator

This is a long standing issue as others noted. One solution, if you're comfortable with the command line, is to use xcopy with the /d parameter which will copy only newer or unique files.
xcopy sourcepath targetpath /d

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Answer

coversyl

I too have this problem, I cannot do this on W7, I have to use XP which simply allows you to 'ignore' files already in the target directory and just copy the rest. What W7 needs is a 'proceed anyway' button if it works out not enough space.

It is also annoying when you don't care if there is not enough space in the target drive, you just want to copy to copy what it can before the space is full. For example, I have a usb stick which I use to play mp3 files in the car. I plug it into my PC and drag my mp3 folder (size bigger than the capacity of the stick) onto the stick. Under XP it would just fill up the stick then terminate. In W7 it won't copy anything -I have to 'guess' how many files to copy then add a few more one by one until the stick fills up.

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How to suppress the error 'There is not enough space on (drive). You may need an additional XXX to copy these files'.

Replies (15)

Question Info

How to suppress the error 'There is not enough space on (drive). You may need an additional XXX to copy these files'.

Replies (15) 

Question Info

Replies (15)