What is the most reliable way to send a big file between two Windows computers via network? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

Wierdly enough bitorrent might work pretty well here, assuming office policies allow it- it breaks up the file for you, checks if its correct and if not redownloads it. You're probably going to want to run your own tracker, but many bitorrent clients do that anyway, and if possible use webseeds to speed things up even more - burnbit makes this easy.

As an alternative I'd also suggest doing the oldschool pirate thing, and splitting up the files and using a parity file, then transferring it by any means you have, FTP or web server. If you use a webserver, downloads can be continued - with something like wget, and the parity archive would allow you to rebuild the file with a few broken pieces.

Naturally consider encrypting the files or file chunks, if the data is of a sensitive nature as well.

A more recent option may be bitorrent sync - It runs on everything but the toaster (Unless your toaster run windows, linux on x86, PPC or ARM), and handles most of the grunt work for you. It uses the underlying bitorrent protocol but is a lot simpler to use.

Solution 2:

Take a look at robocopy, it supports restarting, and in general is a lot more stable than other options.