ntfs and encrypted files

[dshade]

Probably a dumb question, but... longtime user of BC (at least a few years), but just finally upgraded to newest version from 1.9. I can't copy files from an NTFS-encrypted folder on my hard drive to a removable drive. Other programs sometimes pop up a warning that continuing with the copy will remove encryption. BC 1.9 didn't warn at all, just did the copy. BC 2.1 won't copy, and I have looked, without success, for an option to ignore the encryption issue.

Am I missing something? Thanks.

[Craig]

Assuming you're using Windows XP, we can fix this in the next release. There is a registry "tweak" you can set in the current release that will work around it, but that always leaves the destination unencrypted, even if it could be.

[dshade]

Thanks for the reply - I am glad that I hadn't missed something *really* obvious.

I would like the 'tweak' - I don't care if the dest is unencrypted as the destination drive wouldn't support encryption anyway. In the meantime, I can't use the program at all. Why is this a prob in 2.1 but not 1.9?

How do I find out how to do this so I can use the program again?

[Craig]

The fix was quicker than I expected, so if you want that send an email to support and I'll send you a prerelease.

Tweaks are documented here: http://www.scootersoftware.com/support.php?c=kb_tweaks, but it doesn't look like we've updated it to 2.1 yet. You'll need to use RegEdit to create a new "DWORD" value at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Scooter Software\Beyond Compare\Settings named "OldCopyMethod", which should have a value of "1".

As for why it broke, the short answer is that we used a different method to copy files in 1.9/2.0 and 2.1. The above tweak makes 2.1 use the old behavior.

The longer, techinical answer is that BC 1.9 and 2.0 use a built-in copy routine that just reads and writes the file contents. It doesn't worry about things like NTFS alternate data streams, encryption, etc.

In 2.1 we switched to using the Win32 CopyFileEx function under Windows NT/2000/XP, which handles all of that plus files larger than 2GB. In WinNT4 and Win2k CopyFileEx will copy from an encrypted location to an unencrypted one. In WinXP that was switched to instead return an error, and the only way to allow the copy is with a new flag.

[dshade]

Ummm... wow! What a great response. Now, if only I could get Microsoft to be at least .001% as responsive.

Your reply is fine. I made the registry change and it seems to have worked great, so no rush on the prerelease version - although I do hope you'll incorporate this in your next release.

Thanks again!

Thanks it works fine.