I recently copied and pasted a folder with about 28 GB of Photoshop files on the same desktop of my Windows 10 PC. The copies were then cut and pasted onto a flashdrive, so the original files are all I have on my PC. I was wondering if I should at all be worried about whether the copying process damaged the original files, because I hope I don't need to go through every single file and check if they are corrupt or not. Thanks!
It's not that I think they're corrupted; it's just that I'm afraid if they are. I'm afraid because it's a bunch of work that I don't have copies of and I hear stories about files being corrupted. It's good to know that copying doesn't touch the original file though.
Corruption is always a risk and you always need to take precautions. One of the most important is to have more than one copy of each file - in other words, backup.
Cut/paste is risky. Copy/paste is safer. Removable media are always more risky than "hard-wired" internal disks. Connectors can become loose and erratic failures can happen.
In short - take precautions. The only way to check if a file is corrupted is to open it.
Flash drives are certainly unreliable. They should never be your only copy. But, no, reading a file doesn’t corrupt it. You do need a thorough strategy for backups though. Disks break every day. Computers are stolen or broken every day. Files are deleted by accident every day. Do you have a plan for carrying on your work when that happens?
External & internal drives are known to fail. Every file is susceptible to catastrophic failure. Backups are essential. Off site backups are safer in the event of a disaster (I live in California where fires and earthquakes are common).
I use Backblaze backup and file recovery service. Everything on my internal and connected external hard drives is backed up to cloud servers nightly for which I pay approx $6/month.
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