Copying large files using Remote Desktop

Question

I have a 4 GB text file, compressed to 1.4 GB zip file. I need to copy it over to a Windows secure server using RDP. I am able to copy small files but not this file. It takes 15 mins and then shows an error. Any tips?

Vegetate

Besides splitting it into smaller files and using a better compression methods? – Brother

Any recommended open source file splitter? Quite restricted options at work due to security. – Vegetate

It's a known issue that "Copying files larger than 2 GB using Clipboard Redirection is not supported." It seems to be unreliable for files approaching this limit. – Correction

Answer 1

You can try to copy it by using Drive Redirection. Here's a tutorial.

BTW, RDP cannot copy files larger than 2GB by using clipboard as said in Microsoft support

Tetrode

And five years later it's still broken. The failure mode is unfriendly, too. It's completely silent while copying. There's no indication that it has failed, nor even an indication of whether it's still working or finished. The only indication is that the destination file stops growing. The limit is 2GB - 1 = 0x7FFFFFFF. Obviously some lazy programmer used a 32-bit signed integer counter. Oops. Maybe that's why the new Win10 Remote Desktop App doesn't seem to support copy/paste at all: they fixed the Remote Desktop Connection file copy/paste bug by de-supporting the feature. – Dardar

And in 2022, there is still a limit... – Hirohito

Answer 2

window rdp clipboard has limit of about 2GB if you want to copy paste more than 2 gb file then you can try any of these options.

1. split file into parts like 1 gb each part with help of winrar or any other software
2. Use any FTP software
3. map local pc drive for remote desktop session(for move or copy data)

Tiffin

Thanks! This helped me figure out that in mRemote you can scroll down in the config and enable redirect on your disk drives to share your drives with the remote computer, allowing you to copy large files. – Mcginley

Mapping a local drive still seems to error out with files over 2gb. I use both steps 1 and 2 with success. – Bamako

Answer 3

File size doesn't matter - I copied folders through Remote Desktop connection with 30GB and more. While doing this I received "Unspecified error". The Problem is that you aren't allowed to use the clipboard again while you are copying. Doesn't matter if you use the clipboard for the same machine or from the remote machine. To summarize don't use Ctrl+C.

The madness is the error is delayed so you don't recognize quickly that those things relate.

Jasisa

Well done, I can confirm that this is the solution to my problems on Windows 10 with files of any size, but it's more noticeable with large files. I frequently copy files from RDP sessions and often get Unspecified Error while I let the RDP session run in the background. Any use of the clipboard causes the file copying procedure to fail. I would suggest an edit to the above in English: "Don't use Ctrl-C" (instead of German STRG-C). I will make the change now. – Itinerary

Glad i could help and thanks for the edit and further for the confirmation that the solution works. Feel free for further edits. – Jasisa

This is one of the gotcha. Also if you're using vmware or other virtual machine, using ctrl+c inside guest will result in the same symptom. So don't even use ctrl+c in guest. – Fill

Wow. This is absolutely wild. – Slick

This did the trick in case of "Unspecified error"! – Baptize

For me, large file copies fail instantly, but I surmise that in your case, the file copy begins OK and runs until the clipboard gets clobbered? – Vo

@Vo Yes it starts "normal" but as soon as I copy something else it stops instantly. – Jasisa

Answer 4

If you are administrator, you can copy the files of any size over the network using Administrative Shares assuming that it is not purposefully disabled.

Enter the following url on your File Explorer and you will see all the files and folders on your C drive of that computer with read and write access:

\\computername\c$

Forrest

Answer 5

1. format usb drive as ntfs
2. connect drive as local resource in remote desktop
3. NET USE X: \\TSCLIENT\F
4. robocopy c:\source x:\
5. net use X: /delete

Woe

Answer 6

What confused me was that after copying the file on the remote session, nothing seemed to happen when I tried to paste. What I figured out is that you can't attempt the paste until the file has finished being copied over, but you don't know when that is (which is a bit unintuitive to me). The solution I found was to download TCPview from Microsoft which you can use to monitor the process. It's a bit of a pain, but here is how I do it.

• On your local PC, open Windows Explorer in the folder where you want to paste the file.
• Open TCPview and sort by Recv Bytes
• On Remote Desktop, select your file and do right-click Copy. Now you have to wait, but you should see activity in TCPview as the file gets transferred.
• Once you see in TCPview that the RdClient.Windows.exe process has transferred a number of bytes corresponding to your file, then you can paste in Windows Explorer. It's not precise but it (usually) works.

Waldenses

Answer 7

In case this helps anyone else who lands here from a search engine, if you're getting Unspecified error whilst copying a file smaller than the limit detailed in the accepted answer, like a 500MB file:

Check that the file is not in use on the remote machine. For me I was trying to copy an Outlook .PST file, but Outlook was open on the remote machine.

Closing the application locking the file on the remote machine allows the file to be copied to your local machine.

Aurignacian

Answer 8

right-click zip-file >> Properties >> Advanced >> Encrypt contents

open your one-drive or googledrive (if the secure server allows you) and park the encrypted file on there.

(you might have to one-drive space by signing up to a months 365)

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/manage-your-onedrive-storage-and-limits-989fce19-ade6-4e2f-81fb-941eabefee28

I guess it would might be possible to use google datastore or something cloudy.

Deportment