Windows message: Copy file without properties - that is behind it
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If you copy files to a USB stick under Windows, the message "Do you really want to copy the file without properties?" Often appears. We explain why this message appears and reveal whether your data will be lost.
Windows message: Copy file without properties
The message "The file has properties that cannot be copied to the new location. Are you sure you want to copy the file without properties?" has been around for many versions of Windows. It only occurs if you manually copy files from your internal hard drive to a USB stick or an external hard drive. The reason for the message are the different file systems.
- There are three main file systems for storage media: NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT. Since the latter is seldom found at present, the focus is on the first two systems. The following principle applies: The internal hard drives on your PC are formatted with NTFS, USB sticks and smaller, external hard drives as standard with FAT32.
- The main difference between NTFS and FAT32 lies in the storage capacity for file information. For example, NTFS stores the time of the last access for each file, the identity of the owner and in some cases the origin of the data (for example, as a marker that the file was downloaded with Microsoft Edge). The FAT32 file system cannot process this information.
- If you copy a file with such information from your NTFS partition to a FAT32 drive, this data will be lost. Therefore, the above warning appears on Windows.
- However, the loss of information has almost no impact. After all, the file itself is copied to your USB stick without errors and only loses additional information that is hardly needed anyway.
- So if the message appears, you can simply confirm it and start the copying process. Unless this information is relevant to you. In this case you should cancel the process.
- If you do not want to lose any file information when copying, you can alternatively format your USB stick with NTFS.
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- We'll explain exactly what NTFS is in the next practical tip.