Sometimes, when users copy files to another location like external hard drive, they receive error can’t read from the source file or disk while copying Windows 10. You can see the image below. This error persists even when the users try again and again.
We’ve found that many users had this experience. So, if you are encountering the same issue, you are not alone. One of the encountering the same issue said the following on a security forum:
“I’m trying to copy some old files from one of my external hard-drives, onto a more recent one with bigger memory. I’ve had no problem so far, I’ve moved about 70GB with no problems, but now there are 2 files which keep giving me this error. I can’t copy it from one hard-drive to the other, I can’t create a copy on my desktop, I can’t create a copy on the original hard drive……”
Possible reasons and solutions for this error
In this article we would provide you a list of five possible causes and corresponding solutions to help you out can’t read from the source file or disk while copying Windows 10. Please try them one by one and see whether a solution is helpful.
#1: There could be bad sectors on the hard drive
If you are using an external drive, you should plug-in this drive into another computer to see if the same occurs on that computer as well. If you find can’t read from the source file or disk while copying Windows 10 on that computer as well, this could possibly mean that you have some bad sectors on your hard drive that is causing the problem.
To get what is that bad sector, we recommend you to do a test with MiniTool Partition Wizard. It is a professional disk partition manager tool to deal with disk partition management issues. Download the app and then follow the following guides:
- After the download/ installation of Free Partition Wizard on your system, open it to get the main interface. Then, select the region where you encounter can’t read from the source file or disk while copying Windows 10 and select Surface Test from Check Partition group on the left,
- Click on Start button to the newer smaller appears to begin the Surface test. Those disks that are blocked without reading error is marked with Green and those with error will be marked with Red.
If any bad sectors you see on your drive, here are the three possible solutions you have to deal with the issue:
Fix error using Chkdsk
Scan the hard drive with Chkdsk tool. It will go ahead with any errors and automatically fix them. Here are the complete steps:
- Run Command Prompt as Admin,
- Under the command line, type “chkdsk n: /r”,
Her n is the correct partition number from which you want to copy files
- Restart the computer and retry copying the file.
Copy using Partition Wizard
Using third party program to copy files off forcefully is the next option if you are dealing with can’t read from the source file or disk while copying Windows 10. It will help you in copying files when you copy files and it stops at bad sectors.
MiniTool Partition Wizard is one such tool that helps you in copying files no matter of any bad sectors after running chkdsk that will not hang, freeze or fail:
- Launch the tool suggested and enter its main interface. Then, click on the partition that holds the files and select Copy Partition on the Partition Management group,
- On the opened window, select the path you want to copy the partition to. Then, Click Next to continue,
- Now, customize the location of the new partition and set it as primary or logical. After that, click finish to back to the main interface.
- You will see a new partition on the targeted location, Click Apply any time you want to start copying the partition.
Use Data recovery to restore data
The third option is to recover the data using the feature provided in MiniTool Partition Wizard. This feature of the tool is helpful in retrieving any lost data because of various reasons. It is a read only program that does not harm your drive and don’t even need to worry about the privacy leakage.
This is an effective way as even in the case you can’t read from the source file or disk while copying Windows 10, you can delete this file and send it to the Recycle Bing. In other word, you can delete the file causing the issue and then recover it.
For the data recovery function to work, you require the MiniTool Partition Tool’s pro ultimate version. The free and Pro Edition doesn’t support data recovery. So, this feature is not freely available. First pay for it and then follow the below steps to perform the data recovery:
- You can see the Data recovery option on the top of the main page of the tool. Choose the partition that your data is missing from, and then click Data recovery,
- Upon that, select the partition where the file exists from the list of all partitions available there and then choose Scan,
- The Minitool will scan all the data on the drive and list them in another interface. There, you will be able to unfold all folders and find those files that are causing can’t read from the source file or disk while copying Windows 10,
- Here, Filter is another option that you would see. Use it to find the desired files. Then, click on save option and choose a partition on the targeted drive to store these files.
#2: System Errors
If can’t read from the source file or disk while copying Windows 10 is because of error in the system, simply restart the system. This will solve the problem in a minute.
#3: Problems with Power and Cables
Sometimes, when you are using an external drive, and when it does not get the enough power, it may fail when you copy a file to the drive. Also, you should try switching out the cable you are using to connect the external drive to your computer and see if this makes a difference.
#4: if you are copying large files
For example, if the files are a huge 8MB movie file, then you won’t be able to copy it to your external drive which is formatted with FAT32 file system. In this case, you should firstly convert the file system of your target drive to NTFS. You can finish this job using the same Minitool Partition Wizard. It will help you in performing the conversion without losing any data.
#5: Problems with File Name
You might get can’t read from the source file or disk while copying Windows 10 because the file name of the file you are trying to copy to the hard drive is something that Windows doesn’t recognize. So, try with renaming the file and see if this works.
Summary
We’ve talked about can’t read from the source file or disk while copying Windows 10 in this post and se why this problem may be encountered and what are the several fixes. If you have any question or come up with better solution, please let us know through the below comment section.
