Copy Files Incremental Copy Problem
 

Hi, I am trying to use the 'Copy Files' action with the 'Incremental Copy' option. The source and destination folders are on different servers, and both contain about 6000 files. The files should be identical, with the exact same size and timestamp.

I wanted to test and make sure both folders contained the exact same files, so, I ran the copy with 'Do not copy, only display files and folders that would be copied or deleted' checked. I ran the copy 5 times a different file list was returned as being 'Different'.

I checked the files on the two servers and they were the exact same size with the exact same timestamp.

My questions are:

What criteria does 'Copy Files' look at to determine if the files are 'Different'?

How did I get a different file list each time I ran 'Copy Files' even though nothing had changed in either directory?

Why would a file show up as different even though it has the same size and timestamp in both locations?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks,
Barry

The Copy Files action compares the file timestamps (as reported by the FindFirstFile API) and sizes (as reported by the GetFileSize API) to determine if the files are different.

If either of those API calls return different values or fail, the file will be considered different. It does open the file (using CreateFile with GENERIC_READ, OPEN_EXISTING, and FILE_SHARE_READ) to get a handle for the GetFileSize call, so if that failed (for instance, if a file was locked from opening for reading by another app), that would result in it treating the files as different. We'll add a request to our list to investigate using the values returned by FindFirstFile instead (although this might also fail if the file is locked or for other reasons [network connectivity issues?]).

We'll also see about failing the step if any of the APIs used for comparing fails, reporting the error message in the build log.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...8VS.85%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...8VS.85%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...8VS.85%29.aspx

This is implemented in v7.2a.