Windows – OS X software for copying from Windows File Shares

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I am migrating from Windows as my desktop operating system, but will still need to interact with Windows file servers.

Is there any OS X software to help with copying files from file servers. I am specifically looking for an analogue of Robocopy that will copy files from a directory on a Windows file server, and retry any files that fail.

I'm happy using either a GUI or command line.

Best Answer

You could use the SAMBA protocol (or Apple's implementation of it), to connect to a Windows Share.

Either open Finder and choose "Go" -> "Connect to Server" in the menu bar. Example

Now connect to your share(s) using the SMB:// as protocol definition. If activated it will ask you for authentication afterwards. Then the share will be mounted like any other mount point.

Or you could use the terminal to mount the file system using the

mount_smbf

command.

After you've mounted the Windows Share you should be able to use any command line tool or GUI software do to your copying. Instead of robocopy you could use rsync for example (which is built in and pretty powerful).

One note: Just remember that saving files directly from within apps on a share could cause some troubles if they are using Apples's Versions feature, which is not supported by FAT or NTFS file systems.

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Just open the shared folder in Finder where you want to copy. And open its info tab. In that you will find the permission section at the bottom. In that change the permission to read & write to everybody. I encountered the same problem and I solved it this way. To edit permission you will need super user access.

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I did manage to recover a fair amount of the files I needed through Windows, and if anybody else has this issue it is very helpful. I never even considered this option among the many others, but somehow it managed to pull the majority of my files off and onto an external drive.

I loaded Windows PowerShell in Administrator mode and ran the following script (it was a script to only copy directories that have files, but without modification it worked successfully):

$path = 'C:\source\directory'
$destination = 'e:\destination\directory’

Get-ChildItem $path -Directory |
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    {
        Copy-Item -path $_.fullname -Destination $destination -Recurse}
    }

Best Answer

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