I needed to copy a very large file (~25GB), a virtual machine disk across a network (LAN). Standard Windows copy isn’t great for this, and it kept on getting stuck. I also tried using the copy/xcopy commands but they weren’t much help. The problem was a matter of feedback and recovery. That is, having the ability to see how much longer it was take and to pause/resume in case of a failure.

Finally I settled on TeraCopy, a GUI file copy tool which has a portable version. All up it took about 4 hours to copy across a wireless network. Best thing is you can pause/resume if there are any network drops and you get instant feedback about the copy process. The remaining time is also a little bit more reliable than Microsoft time!