Which programs open .tif files?

How can I copy files from my drives? Any good programs out there?

• I have a bunch of drives from different laptops and externals I had collected over the years, and I would like to copy all the files to one single large new drive so I can go through and sort them out. I would like to make exact copies (including system files) of all the drives first and then sort out all the files later. I tried using a couple of free utilities, but each time there were too many files missing. For example, the contents of the "Pictures" folder didn't get copied from one of the drives. I'm pretty sure it's the permissions issue, but maybe not. I'm hoping I won't have to "take ownership" of the drives since my understanding is that after one does that the drive cannot be booted from again. I also had similar permissions/missing files issues with an external drive too. Which I thought was bizarre since they are meant to go from one computer to another. Anyway, is there some kind of utility (free preferably, but paid is OK) which can just copy all the files from a drive into a folder without me fiddling with things too much? Also, I am not looking for disk imaging software, just file backup. I have Acronis True Image but I'm pretty sure I wont be able to access individual files with that. Anyway, I would really appreciate any help. Thanks.

• Answer:

  Use robocopy. If you've got Vista or 7 then it's already on your computer. If you've XP then you need to download the resource kit which contains it - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17657 Robocopy is a command line utility to copy files keeping the entire directory structure, keeping the file/folder permissions or not depending on the switches you use. It's similar to the older xcopy but more powerful and the default actions are a little different. Here's the switches you can use for it - http://ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html and http://www.computerhope.com/robocopy.htm Here's some information about how it handles file/folder permissions - http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/archive/2008/07/31/robocopy-mir-switch-mirroring-file-permissions.aspx and http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/windows/article.php/3719606/Robocopy-Polices-Windows-File-Permissions.htm