S-IT-3Copy – Help

Overview

S-IT-3Copy is a triple copier with logging and a scheduler. It runs up to three independent copy or move jobs in a single pass – ideal for distributing files to NAS drives, cloud folders (pCloud, for instance) or any other target. On top of that, profiles can run automatically on a schedule in the background, with no manual intervention at all.

Typical use: copy source data from one local folder to several targets at once – NAS 1, NAS 2 and pCloud, say – either at the press of a button or automatically every evening at a fixed time.

💡 In practice – not really limited to three jobs: a single run handles at most three source/target pairs at a time, but the number of profiles is unlimited, and every profile can have a schedule of its own (see the Scheduler section). In practice that means: as many independent copy tasks as you like, each with its own three source/target pairs, each at its own time or interval – all running automatically in the background without being started one by one. For example: a profile “Photos” daily at 8 pm, a profile “Accounting” every 4 hours, a profile “Weekly backup” on Saturdays only – all set up at the same time and active independently of one another.

Python version: 3Copy is built on a modern technical foundation (Python instead of AutoIt). Copy runs happen in the background, so the interface stays responsive throughout – even with very large numbers of files or slow network drives (it does not freeze). Large individual files are copied block by block, so the progress bar keeps moving visibly even within one very large file, and ⏹ Stop takes effect immediately, including in the middle of a large file.

Setting up jobs

The program supports three independent copy jobs (A1, A2, A3). Each job consists of a source and a target folder and can be enabled or disabled individually.

The “active” checkbox

Only jobs that are ticked as active are processed when you press Start. Disabled jobs are skipped entirely, but keep their paths on file.

🔰 Job filter

At the right of every job card’s header sits the 🔰 symbol. It sets filters that apply to that one job only: additional exclusions and the ONLY rule (“copy these file types only”). The symbol lights up green as soon as a rule is set for the job – greyed out means no job-specific filters are active. Details in the Exclusions section.

Choosing the source

Click 📁 Source to pick the source folder for that job. The dialog remembers the last source folder separately from the target selection – the next click on Source (in any job) starts there again.

Choosing the target

Click 📁 Target to set the target folder. It does not have to exist beforehand – it is created automatically during the copy run. Here too the dialog remembers the last target folder separately from the source selection.

Showing long paths: if a path does not fit into the display field, it is shortened cleanly (beginning…end) rather than cut off at the edge. The full path appears when you rest the mouse on it (tooltip); internally 3Copy always works with the complete path.

Data volume: the Data volume area shows the current size of every active source folder. Click 🔄 Refresh to update the display after changes. The calculation runs in the background – while it does, (calculating…) appears, and the interface stays usable the whole time.

Network and NAS paths: UNC paths of the form \\server\share are fully supported – as source and as target. For network sources the data volume is deliberately not counted up in advance (on large shares that can take a long time); (network) appears instead. The copy run itself proceeds perfectly normally.

Options

Overwrite (per job)

With this option enabled, existing files in the target are always overwritten, regardless of their date. Without it, target files are only overwritten when the source file is newer. If the target file is the same age or more recent, it is skipped.

Timestamp tolerance on network drives: across NAS and network drives, file timestamps differ by one or two seconds for technical reasons. Without a tolerance, unchanged files would therefore count as newer in “only if newer” mode and be copied again on every run. 3Copy evens that out with a tolerance of two seconds – adjustable per profile via the 🛡 symbol.

Move (per job)

With this option enabled, files are moved instead of copied. The source file is deleted only after it has arrived in the target complete and intact. Empty source folders are removed automatically after the move.

Note on moving: files are removed from the source folder. Check before the first run that this is what you want. If an error occurs or the run is stopped midway, the source file is guaranteed to remain untouched – deletion happens only after a fully successful transfer.

After copying: shut down or sleep

The 💻 After copying area offers two options: Shut down and Sleep mode. If one of them is enabled and the copy run finished without errors, the program asks whether the computer should be shut down or sent to sleep. After errors or a stopped run the question is not shown.

The two options are mutually exclusive – ticking one clears the other. Sleep mode uses the Windows power management; whether the machine goes to standby or hibernation depends on your Windows power settings.

These two options do not apply to automatic runs started by the scheduler – they only take effect for copy runs you start yourself.

Excluding files and folders

The 🚫 button in the profile bar (next to 🗑 Delete) keeps particular files and whole folders out of the copy. That is especially useful for leaving out temporary files, system files and the often enormous browser cache folders in the first place – or for keeping large backup and image files away so that no needless heap of data builds up in the target.

Two kinds of entry: file patterns with wildcards (*.tmp, *.iso, ~$*) match individual files. Folder names (cache2, GPUCache) exclude an entire folder including all its subfolders – it is not even entered during the copy, which saves additional time on large cache trees.

Standard exclusions

On first start the program creates the file 3Kopier-Ausschluss.ini with sensible defaults: temporary files (Windows, Office, LibreOffice/OpenOffice), Windows system files, the cache folders of the common browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi) as well as large image formats such as *.iso, *.nrg or *.tib. This standard list applies to all profiles to begin with. The Open standard list button in the exclusion window opens it for editing at any time.

Adjusting per profile

The exclusion window always refers to the profile currently loaded (to “Manuell” for a run without a profile). Two adjustments are possible:

Disable a standard entry: clear its tick in the list of standard exclusions – that entry then no longer applies to this one profile. For example, in a backup profile that is meant to include ISO files, clear the tick on *.iso.
Add your own exclusions: enter additional items in the text field below, one per line – file patterns and folder names mixed (*.mp4 or Downloads, say).

The list that actually takes effect is therefore: standard list − entries removed for this profile + your own additions.

Adjusting per job: the 🔰 symbol

On top of the profile-wide rules, each of the three jobs can have filters of its own. Clicking the 🔰 symbol in a job card’s header opens a small dialog with two fields (separate several entries with |):

Additional exclusions for this job only: *.iso | cache2, for instance – this works like an extra entry in the exclusion window, but applies to this job alone. Folder names work without wildcards as usual.
The ONLY rule (“everything except”): with patterns in this field, the job copies exclusively matching files – everything else is excluded. Example: job 1 *.pdf, job 2 *.jpg, job 3 *.mp4 – that way a single run sorts a mixed folder by file type onto three targets. An empty field switches the rule off. Convenient: pdf or .pdf is enough, the program completes it to *.pdf itself.

The ONLY rule applies to files alone – the folder structure is still walked normally, so matching files are found in subfolders too. Files filtered out this way count towards the Excluded category in the result.

Precedence: the profile-wide exclusions always apply as well. So a *.tmp file stays out even with “only *.tmp”, as long as the standard entry *.tmp has not been disabled for the profile.

In the log: excluded files and folders are counted as their own category Excluded – separately from skipped files – and appear as such in the summary, in the folder overview and in the result window.

Profiles

A profile stores the complete configuration of all three jobs (source, target, options, active state) under a name, so it can be recalled at any time – and used as the basis for the scheduler.

Selecting a profile

Clicking an entry in the profile drop-down loads that profile immediately – a separate “Load” button is no longer needed.

Careful with unsaved changes: because the selection loads straight away, changes to the job fields that have not been saved yet are lost when you switch to another profile. Save them with 💾 Save first if you want to keep them.

Save / new / delete

💾 Save stores the current configuration under the chosen name. ➕ New asks for a name and then clears all three jobs completely – so a new profile is guaranteed to start from scratch, with no leftovers from a profile loaded earlier. 🗑 Delete removes the selected profile for good.

Profile in use by the scheduler: if you save a profile that appears in an active schedule, the program points that out in a message. The reason: the scheduler only remembers the profile name and loads the profile afresh on every run. The changes you just saved (sources, targets, options) therefore apply to the scheduled runs of that profile as well. The message can be cancelled if that was not intended.

🛡 Network & timestamps

The 🛡 symbol in the profile bar (next to 🚫) opens the timestamp setting for the current profile. It governs how “only if newer” mode (Overwrite not ticked) decides whether a file really is newer – and stops unchanged files on NAS and network drives from being copied again on every run because of timestamp differences.

Automatic (default): the two-second tolerance applies only when source or target is a network path of the form \\server\share. Purely local copies are compared exactly.
Always: the tolerance always applies, locally as well. Useful for network drives mapped to a drive letter (X:, for instance), which “Automatic” does not recognise as a network.
Off: exact comparison without any tolerance.

The setting is stored per profile. The dialog also shows which of the three jobs currently use a network path.

Settings

The gear symbol ⚙ at the top right of the program window (next to ? HELP) opens the settings dialog.

Language

3Copy speaks several languages. The language is usually chosen during installation; here it can be changed at any time. On offer are all languages for which a language file sits next to the program – each with its flag, so the choice stays clear even when the interface in front of you is currently in a language you do not read.

The program name changes with the language: 3Kopier in German, 3Copy in English, 3Copier in French, 3Copiar in Spanish. The name on screen changes with the language; the files on disk keep their names (3Kopier.ini, profiles with the extension .3ko, the logs in the Logs folder). Switching language therefore changes nothing about your settings, profiles and filters.

Takes effect after a restart: like the scaling, the language takes effect once the program window is rebuilt. A copy run in progress is never interrupted – the new language then appears at the next regular start.

Further languages come as tested language packs from Sattler IT-Service and appear in the selection automatically once installed. The language files supplied are encrypted, just like the scheduler module: that way the texts you read in the program are guaranteed to be the ones that were shipped.

Interface scaling

Fixed steps from 90 % to 200 % are available (90, 100, 125, 150, 175, 200). The step currently in use is highlighted. After clicking Apply, the interface is rebuilt at the new size.

Fixed window size: the program window deliberately cannot be resized by dragging its corners. That prevents distorted or cut-off displays. If you want a larger view, simply choose a higher scaling step.

Keep logs for

Sets how long finished log files (see the Logs section) are kept automatically before they are deleted at the next program start. Fixed steps from 1 day to 365 days are available, as well as ∞ (unlimited) – then nothing is deleted automatically.

The 🗑 Clean up now button applies the chosen period immediately, without waiting for the next program start.

Log detail

Determines how detailed a run’s log file is:

Compact (default): one summary line per job in the log (copied, overwritten, skipped and so on, including the data volume) – no individual folder lines. Together with the summary at the top of the file, the log stays a short, readable overview no matter how many thousands of files and folders were processed.
Detailed: in addition, one line per folder is written (number of files, actions, data volume) – useful for troubleshooting when you need to see what happened in a particular folder, or why a file was not copied.

The setting takes effect on the very next run, scheduled runs included. Errors are always logged in full in both modes, as are automatic path shortenings (MAX_PATH).

Running a copy manually

1. Set up the jobs

Set source, target and the matching options for every job you want. Enable the job with the active checkbox.

2. Press Start

The program first counts all files in the active source folders so that the progress bar is filled correctly. This counting phase can already be stopped with ⏹ Stop and shows a running interim message when there are very many files, instead of appearing frozen. The jobs are then processed one after another (A1, A2, A3).

3. Watch the progress

The progress bar, the status line and the statistics are updated continuously during the run. With a single very large file the bar keeps moving visibly within that one file, instead of standing still until it is finished. The status line also shows an estimated time remaining as soon as there is enough data, along with the current copy speed (157.4 MB/s, for example) – calculated as a moving average of the last few seconds so that the figure stays steady when file sizes vary. Both apply to the scheduler’s progress window as well. In a simulation there is no speed display, since nothing is actually copied there.

4. Stopping

⏹ Stop or the ESC key stops the run cleanly at any time – even in the middle of a large file. Files already processed in full are kept; a target file that has only just been started and is still incomplete is removed automatically, so no torso is ever left behind.

5. Result window

When the run finishes, a result window opens with the statistics per job – details in the Result section.

Scheduler

The 🕐 Scheduler button in the main window opens a window of its own in which any number of profiles can run automatically on a schedule – several times a day or at fixed intervals if you like.

Creating a schedule

Use ➕ New to pick a profile and set a trigger:

Daily – a fixed time, every day
Weekdays – a fixed time, on selected weekdays only
Interval – every X hours, regardless of the time of day

✏ edits an existing schedule at any time, 🗑 deletes it. The Active checkbox in the edit dialog pauses a schedule temporarily without deleting it.

🔍 Simulation / ▶ Start (testing by hand)

Every schedule row has two buttons for immediate, manual testing – independently of the schedule itself:

🔍 Simulation – shows exactly what would happen (which files would be copied, overwritten, skipped …) without changing anything. Nothing is copied, moved or deleted.
▶ Start – carries the job out for real, right away.

These two buttons always show the progress window and then the result window – regardless of whether silent mode is enabled for that schedule. Silent mode (see below) applies only to runs triggered automatically, never to testing by hand.

🔇 Silent mode

In the edit dialog (✏, or when creating with ➕ New) silent mode can be enabled per schedule. With it switched on, a run triggered automatically by the schedule proceeds entirely without any window:

If all was well (including when there was nothing to copy), it stays completely quiet – no window, no message.
If a real error occurred (source or target not reachable, say), a short, unobtrusive message appears pointing to the log concerned.

A schedule with silent mode enabled is marked with the 🔇 symbol in the list.

An independent progress window

When a schedule runs (not silent, whether triggered automatically or tested by hand with Simulation/Start), a small window of its own opens with a progress bar, statistics and its own ⏹ Stop button. The window appears even when 3Copy is only running in the background (tray), has its own entry in the taskbar and can be minimised if it is in the way – the run then carries on out of sight. The same applies when you start the run from the open scheduler window.

The progress window’s close button (X) acts like ⏹ Stop: it stops that one run cleanly – the run does not carry on invisibly in the background afterwards.

Important: the main window with the job cards stays completely untouched – your own unsaved work in the main window is never overwritten or disturbed by a schedule starting automatically.

The queue when runs overlap

Only one copy run happens at a time. If a schedule falls due while another run is still going (another schedule or a run you started yourself), the due run is not lost: it is placed in a queue and starts automatically as soon as the current run has finished. Several schedules set to the same time are therefore worked through one after another, each in full. Waiting and starting later is recorded in the error log (3Kopier-Fehler.log); a run started from the queue is marked (from queue) in its progress window.

So that this also works unattended (overnight, for instance), the result window of a scheduled run does not wait for an “OK”: it simply stays open, and the next run from the queue starts automatically. In the morning the result windows left standing show, one after another, what happened during the night.

Stopping affects the current run only: if a run is stopped with ⏹ Stop, the runs waiting in the queue carry on quite normally afterwards – each in its own progress window with its own ⏹ Stop button. A run that was stopped can be recognised by “SUMMARY (STOPPED)” at the top of its log file.

Background operation, tray & autostart

Closing the window

If at least one active schedule exists, the main window’s (X) button does not close the program – only the window disappears, and the program carries on in the background (recognisable by the icon in the Windows taskbar notification area, the tray). That keeps the scheduler running even when nobody keeps the window open.

If no active schedule exists, the (X) button quits the program as usual.

Opening it again

Right-clicking the tray icon opens a small menu with Open (shows the window again) and Exit (quits the program for good, active schedule or not).

Autostart

As soon as at least one active schedule exists, 3Copy adds itself to the Windows autostart – it then starts minimised in the background when you log on, without showing the window. When the last active schedule is deleted or disabled, the autostart entry removes itself just as automatically.

Only one instance at a time

If 3Copy is started a second time while an instance is already running (invisibly in the background as well), no second window opens. The instance already running is made visible again instead.

Long paths (MAX_PATH)

By default Windows does not allow file paths longer than 260 characters (the MAX_PATH limit). Files whose target paths are too long can be neither copied nor moved – this affects files in deeply nested folders with long names in particular, as often found in download folders.

3Copy detects such files automatically and shortens the file name in the target as far as necessary, so that the run goes through all the same.

Automatic shortening: if the target path is too long, the file name in the target is shortened first – just enough to keep the path below 260 characters. If that is not enough, the last subfolder in the target path is shortened as well. The file extension is always preserved. Shortened names carry the marker -3k, for example Secret.Service.2026.-3k.mkv.

The source file is untouched: only the target path is adjusted. The original file on the source keeps its name. The original and the shortened target path are both recorded in the log.

Not to be confused – shortening in the display: with very long source or target paths, the display in the job fields itself is shortened (beginning…end), for example H:\Download\…\Files. That is purely visual: internally the full path is always used. The complete path appears as a tooltip when you move the mouse over the field.

Result window

After every finished (or stopped) run a result window opens – with a column of its own per active job, so that it is clear at a glance what went where:

Each column shows the source and target of that job together with its own statistics
Below that, an overall summary across all jobs (data volume, time, number of errors)
In a simulation every line is phrased as “would be …”, plus a clear note that nothing was actually changed

Entry	Meaning
Copied	New files that did not yet exist in the target and were copied
Overwritten	Files that already existed in the target and were updated
Moved	Files moved from the source to the target (the “Move” option)
Skipped	Files that were already more recent in the target and were left unchanged
✂ Shortened	Files whose target path exceeded the MAX_PATH limit and was shortened automatically (marker `-3k`)
Excluded	Files and folders skipped according to the exclusion list (see the Exclusions section)
Errors	Files or jobs that could not be processed (details at the end of the log concerned)
Data	Volume of data processed (per job and in total)
Time	Total duration of the copy run (mm:ss)

Logs

For every run – started by hand or by the scheduler, real or simulated – a log file of its own is created in the Logs subfolder, rather than one single file growing without end.

File name

Every log file is named Profilename_timestamp_kind.log, for example:

MMDownload_2026-07-08_180000_START.log – a real run of the profile “MMDownload”
3Test_2026-07-08_190000_SIMULATION.log – a simulation of the profile “3Test”
Manuell_2026-07-08_201500_START.log – a run without a profile loaded

📋 Log in the main window opens the Logs folder directly in Windows Explorer.

File names stay the same in every language: a run without a profile is always filed under Manuell, and the settings files keep their German names as well. That is deliberate – it means the same installation finds its settings, profiles and filters again after a change of language, and a log you send in can be read straight away.

What a log file contains

The summary with the overall statistics and the running time is right at the top – the result is visible without scrolling
Date, time and profile name of the run
Source and target of every job together with the options chosen
A summary line per job (actions and data volume); in Detailed mode additionally a summary per folder instead of one line per file (see Settings → Log detail)
If errors occurred, they also appear as a separate section “=== ERRORS ===” at the very end of the file – in full, in both modes

Retention: how long log files are kept before they are deleted automatically is set under Settings (1 day to 365 days, or unlimited).

⚠ Error log (`3Kopier-Fehler.log`)

This separate file in the program folder (reachable via ⚠ Errors) contains program errors only – ones that do not belong to any particular copy run, such as the scheduler module failing to load. Errors within a copy run appear, as described above, at the end of that run’s own log file.

The INI file (3Kopier.ini): all settings are saved automatically when the program ends and restored at the next start – among them the source and target paths, the active state of the three jobs, the Overwrite and Move options per job, the Shut down option, the source and target folders last used in the selection dialogs, the chosen scaling step, the language in use, the retention period for logs and the log detail (compact/detailed). No manual configuration is needed.

Profiles (.3ko files): saving a profile stores all paths, the active state and the Overwrite and Move options per job. The Shut down option is a global setting and is stored in the INI file only, not in the profile.

The schedule file (3Kopier-Zeitplan.ini): all schedules created (profile, trigger, silent mode, active state) are stored here and loaded again automatically at the next start.

Overview: files & folders in the program folder

All of the following files and folders are created automatically during operation – none of them has to be created by hand or shipped with the program:

File / folder	Contents
`3Kopier.ini`	General settings: job fields, options, folders last used, scaling, language, retention period
`3Kopier-Zeitplan.ini`	All schedules created, with profile, trigger, silent mode and active state
`3Kopier-Fehler.log`	Program errors that do not belong to any particular copy run
`Logs` (folder)	One log file per run – see Logs
`*.3ko`	The profiles you create (one file per profile name)

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