Random Online Utility: TeraCopy

It's only been 9 months since I last encountered a random utility program that I enjoyed enough to stop and bring your attention to it (in this running "series" of Random Online Utilities). This time the helpful little program is called TeraCopy.

As a remote Telerik office with HQ in Sofia, Bulgaria, I often find myself trying to download large files over a Windows network that may experience intermittent communication errors (due to VPN disconnects, local Internet issues, etc.). This can lead to some pretty frustrating experiences. Imagine trying to download a 2GB ISO only to have a network communication error throw away the hours of waiting because your VPN decided to reset. Not cool...

TeraCopy is the best utility I've found to address the problem. It is a free utility app that supports most versions of Windows (including Win7 32/64 bit) and provides "resilience" to network file copying that Windows (frankly) should have out of the box. It supports queuing, pausing, resuming, and auto error recovery for any Windows file copy operations. In fact, if enabled, TeraCopy will automatically intercept all copy operations without requiring any additional action on your part. It's like Internet Download Manager (my preferred web download manager) for Windows.

Now, I know some of you will be quick to reference RoboCopy, Microsoft's built-in support for more robust network file copying. While true that RoboCopy does do a better job than built-in Windows copying, out-of-the-box it is a command line only tool, which makes it less than convenient for everyday network copying. There are GUIs for RoboCopy, too, but I find TeraCopy to be more minimalistic and transparent- just the way a great random utility should be!