When doing a backup of a hard disk drive, I copy and paste everything to a partiton on a W2K professional machine. This way I get to keep my O/S and files seperate from the backup. My problem is with those annoying permissions! When copying files to the partition permissions are a pain! I overcame this pretty well with a tool "Beyond Compare 2". It errors out on copying a lot less due to persmissions. In a case like this, I was wondering if anyone had a cool utility that might change the permissions for ALL files at the same time for storing them, dont want any files lost because of persmissions. But at the same time. Permissions restoring to thier previous state is NOT a concern though, as the backup will be placed on the desktop of the new system for backup of like Word files, pictures, music, etc. Can someone help me with a permissions tool that will make ALL the files with the same permissions instead of just working with one file or directory at the same time? Also, having problems copying files with bogus like long file names.

You should be using backup software to do backups. Windows has "ntbackup" built right into it. It will save whatever you choose to a single file you can move wherever you want.

Robocopy.exe

Ntbackup, xcopy, robocopy is the way. But personally I prefer secure copy. We tried this tool for the first time for server migration from the old to the new nas. Everything was completed successfully, with permissions, shares and share permissions intact. Since that time we've been using secure copy frequently for backup needs and synchronizing network folders.