Thumbnails on folders disappear after copying them to another drive

[jarvis007]

Hello,

Wondering if anyone can help me with the following issue:

When I copy a folder to another hard drive, the thumbnail of that folder disappears. It basically copies the folder and files ok, but does not copy the thumbnail of these folders.

The thumbnails of the original folders on the original drive are still ok and still remain there. But it is the COPIES of these files that lack the thumb nails.

Obviously, because I have a lot of these files, I don't want to re-put each and every thumbnail on. I want to just add a thumbnail once, and for it to stay there forever, so I can safely transfer the file to another drive and the thumbnail to remain. But as I said, these thumbnails are lost on the new copies of the folders.

I have already tried the 'view' settings thing, and it makes no difference.

Also, I have attempted to copy to different drives - same issue for all.

Is there an option to make sure that the thumbnails will not be lost when copying folders to another drive? This is driving me insane.

Hope somebody can help.

 

[jarvis007]

Almost a whole month later and no reply, so just bringing this thread to the forefront again. Any answers/ideas/advice? Thanks

 

[Bighorn]

How are the "other hard drives" connected to the computer? I don't see the same thing when working with my External USB drives in File Explorer but then they are never unplugged, don't use different ports and the assigned drive letter in Disk Management stays the same, identity stays the same.

 

[jarvis007]

How are the "other hard drives" connected to the computer? I don't see the same thing when working with my External USB drives in File Explorer but then they are never unplugged, don't use different ports and the assigned drive letter in Disk Management stays the same, identity stays the same.

USB. My external hard drive is USB. I have also tried it on a USB stick just to test, same result. My external hard drive is never unplugged though. But yeah, the external hard drive is drive E. Whereas my main drive (where the thumbnails do show) are drive D. So a different location. I was just hoping that the thumbnails would stay there whenever I moved/copied the file/folder to another location. For example if I ever get a new PC in a few years time and have to copy my files over, I don't want to lose those thumb nails on the folders. Hope this makes sense. Thanks for the reply

 

[Bighorn]

I don't worry about thumbnails but in File Explorer, View on the Menu bar set the icons for one of the 3 sizes of icons, this is the largest:

A folder of images/pictures may contain thumbnails and there will be a *.thn file for each image, may be created by a graphics program.

 

[MKSlinky]

@Bighorn, the OP is not referring to individual thumbnails, he's talking about the 'Folder' thumbnails. As for the *.thn file, this has nothing to do with this issue, Windows doesn't create *.thn files. They might indeed be created by some graphic programs but I've never seen these personally. I'm a self taught graphic designer.

@jarvis007 , One possibility that springs to my mind would be to connect your external USB drive and then open file explorer and look at the options in the tool bar, confirm if the Folder Options 'View Tab' is set to 'Apply this view to all folders'.

Another possibility would be to open the Disk Clean-Up tool (Windows Tools) and click to delete the 'thumbnail cache', it's possible your existing thumbnail cache might be corrupted and rebuilding it might help solve your issue.

Often these kind of issues have nothing to do with the user per say, Windows has suffered from annoying quirks like these for years, sometimes you'll find the solution only to have an update mess things up again. Good luck anyway...