File Copy under Windows

Somehow I didn't say No loud enough and I now find myself doing tech support for a friend of a friend... <bangs head against wall>

All I want to do is copy the files from a laptop to a big USB drive, wipe the drive and reinstall Windows.

I can't seem to copy the drives from the laptop to the USB because the copy gets hung up on files that are in use. I really don't care about those files but I wish the copy wouldn't just stop.

I thought of using a drive copy program but that looks like it grabs an image of the drive and then makes the USB drive a clone. Also seems to make the USB drive the same size as the hard drive.


Is there anyway or any software that I can use to just copy all the drives from the laptop to the USB drive without having the copy die?

Thanks,
Ken

Have you tried using the /c parameter with Xcopy?

Also, under 98, I solved "in use" problems by zipping the files up (which didn't care if they were in use or not). Haven't tried that in XP.

Good luck.

Haven't tried /c and xcopy but I will. Thanks.

If this is an XP system you could use the built in backup utility. It uses volume shadow services and can backup open files.

The user doesn't want to have to restore to get at the files.

I was able to use xcopy and back up the drive. Now it's time to wipe the drive and reinstall the OS. Could Windows suck more?

You shouldn't encourage Microsoft to try...

This one should do the trick:
http://ranvik.net/totalcopy/


...and this might help too:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/opened_files_view.html