Top File Copiers 2022 for Windows 11

File copying is almost an everyday task. It’s too basic, so little do we care about the entire procedure — how copying is done, what determines its speed, what features does the in-house file copying tool in Windows provide, and what does it lack in terms of features, reliability and usability.

Although the native file copying tool in Windows is well-sufficient enough to handle everyday’s file copying operations, it has some drawbacks. Oftentimes, these drawbacks compel people to look for third-party file copier alternatives. If you’re one of them and looking to try out some of the best file copiers for Windows 11, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s dig in.

Drawbacks of Native File Copying in Windows

Just drag & drop the files with your mouse, or use Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V to transfer them from one location to another. It’s very easy and straightforward, right? Not really. Here’s why we think so:

  • Performance: There are some performance issues while copying multiple large files in Windows, especially those sizing several GBs. Unless you’ve an SSD, the batch file transfer speed may be slower while copying tens of GBs of files.
  • Errors: One of the most commonly reported problems with the file copying functionality in Windows is the errors that unexpectedly occur at any time during the file transfer process. Windows may take a lot of time to copy your files and then suddenly throw up an error message. When the error occurs, remaining files are not copied and the entire task stands canceled.
  • Reliability: When an error occurs during the file copying process, Windows does not provide a list that tells the user which files are copied and which ones are not. Such a summary could have been very helpful. Unfortunately, due to the absence of such a summary, if you don’t carefully track the file copying process yourself, you may lose a lot of your files. You might mistakenly assume that all or most of your files are successfully copied while they really aren’t.
  • Usability: Batch file copying is not easy. There’s no way to add multiple source folders and multiple destinations for batch file transfer. If you wish to copy a long list of files from multiple folders simultaneously, you’ve to separately copy them one by one folder-wise. This is not only less user-friendly, but also complex & time consuming.
  • Checksum Verification: Windows does not calculate the checksum of copied files after finishing up the task. Such a feature could have helped identify whether some of the files have been incompletely copied or corrupted during the process. In short, there’s no way to know whether the copied files are not incomplete or corrupt.

Top File Copiers for Windows 11

1. Easy File Renamer

Even though Easy File Renamer is primarily a file renaming tool, it features a powerful File Copier and File Mover as an in-house functionality. The File Copier and File Mover in EFR lets users batch copy and batch move files from multiple directories all at once with little to zero chances of errors. EFR is a tiny, lightweight tool that lets you define multiple folders as the source folders and copy or move large files at lightning speed. You can also choose your own collision rule such as an incremental number when two or more files have the same file names.

Easy File Renamer
Easy File Renamer

In addition to the File Copier and File Mover, you’ll also be able to batch rename files/ folders (the main functionality that EFR offers). You’ll be surprised to find out many other interesting features such as batch edit MP3 music file tags, organize photos on your PC in an organized directory structure, and rename files on your cloud accounts (such as Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, etc.) with a complimentary subscription to a Cloud-based renaming utility.

2. TeraCopy

TeraCopy is one of the most popular freemium file copying/ file moving utilities. TeraCopy provides a real-time graph that depicts the file copying progress, percentage files copied, file copying speed, and file sizes. When a file cannot be copied, TeraCopy attempts to copy it for another time. If it fails, it skips that file instead of aborting the entire file copying progress. If a file could not be copied due to device unavailability, TeraCopy can also wait until that device is plugged-in to the computer again.

TeraCopy
TeraCopy

Once your files are copied, TeraCopy performs a hash checksum to verify they are successfully copied or not. The supported algorithms include CRC32, MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512 and Panama. You can also export the file copy results to a Comma-Separated File (CSV) or an HTML file. You can also create a list of your favorite source and destination folders to be used in the future.

TeraCopy is available in both lite and dark modes for Windows 11.

3. FFCopy

The freeware FFCopy shows a list of files that have been chosen to copy. You can view the files list with various columns that depict the action (copy or move), status (whether the file is being copied or awaiting as other files are being copied), file size, speed (the transfer speed of the file), progress (in percentage), etc. You can also pause and resume the file copying at any time. The software uses divergent transfer and parallel file transfer technologies to boost the file copying speed. It also offers a feature to allocate storage space before copying your files that can be helpful to prevent disk fragmentation.

4. Microsoft RoboCopy

RoboCopy, an abbreviation of Robust File Copy, is a command-line based tool. It provides tons of advanced features for complex file copying operations. One of such features is repetitive copy jobs. The tool is also especially helpful for network administrators to copy large files over-the-network. You can use filters to copy only specific file types, rather than all files. You can also choose whether to copy files from the top-level directories, or all sub-folders, or specific sub-folders of your choice. Microsoft also provides I/O based unbuffered file copying which speeds up copying the large files. You can also choose which file attributes to copy (for example: NTFS ACL, time stamps, owner information, auditing details, etc). Microsoft has provided detailed documentation that beautifully explains how to use the RoboCopy tool.

Microsoft RoboCopy
Microsoft RoboCopy

5. FastCopy

FastCopy offers integration with the Windows shell integration along with x64 capabilities. You can specify a custom buffer speed in MB. In the Include Name and Exclude Name boxes, enter a text that your file name must contain to determine whether they should be copied or not. For example: Do not copy files that contain the word “invoice” info the file name.

FastCopy
FastCopy

Conclusion

While each file copying tool has its own pros and cons, Easy File Renamer does the job brilliantly at lightning speed. Moreover, it provides many add-on features to batch rename files, batch edit MP3 tags, organize photos, batch rename cloud files using a complimentary subscription, etc. It’s definitely worth trying.