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Microsoft Richcopy
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Windows 7 Performance

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Hi
One of the Microsoft tools that was being used by Microsoft programmers to copy
or move files in faster speed. This tool was developed in 1996 but it was being used
internally by Microsoft and was not made available for public usages. However, at a
later stage they made it available for free public download
and now you can also experience faster file copying and moving with this small
Windows utility, called RichCopy.
RichCopy can copy multiple files.

at a time with up to 8 times faster speed than the normal file copy and moving
process. Surprisingly it copies and moves files even faster than RoboCopy tool and
XCOPY command. Since the tool was being used by the developers, they made it
pretty effective and stable .
download Microsoft Rich copy 4.0
Key Features of RichCopy
1. More powerful, faster and stable than than any other file copying tool.
2. Create several profiles to assign special settings with a specific profile.
3. Copy files from multiple and different locations and save in a single destination.
4. Filter the files based on the date, time and choose to either copy or opt those files.
5. Being on GUI, supports command lines.
6. Suspend and resume file copy at any time.

Reference :Technet Magazine

Hope it Helps

Nikhil
o Edited by Nikhil Deshpande Monday, December 07, 2009 3:17 AM changed
to Noel's Link
o Edited by Ronnie VernonMVP, Moderator Tuesday, March 16, 2010 9:48
PM edit
Sunday, December 06, 2009 4:26 AM
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Sounds Good-:)
Sunday, December 06, 2009 12:14 PM
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Yeah Nice Share
we can move with more files ah!
Sunday, December 06, 2009 12:22 PM
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Great find, Nikhil! Thank you.
By the way, I couldn't access the link you posted. Here's another:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/d/0/fd05def7-68a1-4f71-854625c359cc0842//HoffmanUtilitySpotlight2009_04.exe
-Noel
Monday, December 07, 2009 1:55 AM
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HI Noel
Thanks for the link its working fine yesterday, i will change the link and replaces
that you have posted.
thanks for your wishes.

Nikhil

Monday, December 07, 2009 3:15 AM

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I've been using RichCopy 4.0.217 for some time now and it works great...when it
works. Since it's free, there's no support available. My problem is that it will
occasionally neglect to copy a bunch of files, giving an error, "The system cannot
find the path specified." Perhaps it can't create a folder in the destination, despite
having sufficient permissions.

Can I buy another clue? Any other users out there?

Monday, January 11, 2010 10:49 PM
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I've been trying to use it to quickly backup some files to take off our server.
a) I've had the same "The system cannot find the path specified." message many,
many times. This leads me to question if it gets everything, and it doesn't really save
time if you need to run it twice! I've tried decreasing or increasing threads to no
avail.
b) Not once has the program actually completed, crashing out at some random time
in the process. The error (posted below) looks liek a GUI issue, and not actually to
do with copying the files at all! Not being supported, of course there nowhere to
check for assistance or clues.
I'm not suprised they kept this as an Internal app - I'll stay with Robocopy for now.
*******************
Faulting application name: RichCopy.exe, version: 4.0.217.0, time stamp:
0x4a2fa7bf
Faulting module name: comctl32.dll, version: 6.10.7600.16385, time stamp:
0x4a5bd976
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x0009a4ef
Faulting process id: 0x26c8
Faulting application start time: 0x01ca98c61402b389
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Rich Tools\RichCopy
4.0\RichCopy.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.windows.commoncontrols_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.7600.16385_none_421189da2b7fabfc\comctl32.dll
Wednesday, January 20, 2010 2:59 AM
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I have the same problem with RichCopy 4.0.217.0 crashing out randomly. I would
use RoboCopy instead, but my workplace is still stuck on Windows XP SP3 until
Windows 7 SP1 is released. The Windows XP version of RoboCopy has its own
share of bugs.
Monday, February 01, 2010 5:53 PM
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I just tried out RichCopy and it's a great tool... but I found that everytime it hits a
file or folder with an & symbol in it fails to copy. Instead it reports, "The filename,
directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect."
So it's almost perfect... but it can't copy "Marley & Me.mpg" or copy any files out
of a folder called "This & That".
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 8:21 PM

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i know the feeling. i've tried robocopy, xcopy, richcopy (seems buggy and unreliable
when choosing single extensions to include), however there is XXCopy from
pixelabs. No, it's not free but it does work very well.
Last week, i began switching all of my scripting over from a combination of xcopy
+ xxcopy over to robocopy since our MS licensing allows us to use it at no cost, has
built-in switches for easily logging the copy process, PLUS it had the copy status %
and ETA options. Once I got to one of the last scripts, I figured out that robocopy
cannot search multiple files on disk and place them into a single folder (aka
concatenate). An example is to search for all .PST files and place them into a single
folder such as "%userprofile%\my documents\archives". XXCopy has this feature
(use the /SG switch) and it works very well. Plus, if a duplicate name is
encountered during the copying process, it simply takes (file #1 - archive.pst) and
makes it archive0001.pst. Otherwise, all filenames are exactly what they were
before.
I originally just used xcopy until about 2 years ago when the requrement came up to
consolidate all of the PST files into one folder. XXCopy did this one task perfectly
every time and i never bothered replacing xcopy since it was already working fine.
Unless something changes in the next week or two, I guess i will move everything
to XXCopy and upgrade our license count.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 11:52 AM
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I have had the same issue with RichCopy crashing. When running it on a Win2k3
std x86 server the application just closes, on Win2k8 r2 std x64, it will actually give
me an error message. Here is the application error:
Faulting application name: RichCopy64.exe, version: 4.0.217.0, time stamp:
0x4a2fa7b5
Faulting module name: RichCopy64.exe, version: 4.0.217.0, time stamp:
0x4a2fa7b5
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000006b4d3
Faulting process id: 0x1d70
Faulting application start time: 0x01cadcde196c0a39
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Rich Tools\RichCopy
4.0\RichCopy64.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Rich Tools\RichCopy
4.0\RichCopy64.exe
Report Id: 566020c7-4945-11df-889d-0024e877b0fe

The screenshot i have displays 3 of the files being copied, two of them are from a
folder with an '&' symbol. I am rather surprised this is the culprit, but it appears to
be so. Looks like I am headed back to RoboCopy :/
Friday, April 16, 2010 3:17 PM
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The amperand (&) symbol means something special in DOS command line lingo,
and is uncommon in file/folder names, so it's not tremendously surprising some
tools might have a problem with it. They're not handling it properly.
Something to try would be to put the path in quotes, if possible.
If that doesn't work, maybe the best thing to do would be to rename that folder, if
possible.
-Noel
Friday, April 16, 2010 4:04 PM
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I just did some more testing and I don't think the ampersand is the problem, i think
its the path length. The path it is choking on is over 255 characters (including

spaces). I am going to retry my copy, mapping the drive to a letter which should
save ~30 char. Any other work around for long path names? If this continues to be a
problem is there an easy way to get a listing of all of the paths over 255 chars?

Thanks!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010 9:06 PM
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"%" in file name also causes problem.
Monday, July 26, 2010 8:44 PM
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I've just run into that long pathname problem. In Windows 7 when it starts to read
Users\All Users\Application Data, it gets into some kind of recursive loop, e.g.
\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data ... until the
pathname length exceeds 255 chars. Then it bombs and I get the Windows 7 prompt
to let Microsoft look online for solutions.
I tried to filter "Application Data" as the name of a folder but that didn't work for
some reason. Richcopy kept right on recursing the "Application Data" folder until it
crashed. So I rechecked the exclusion filter in my profile and found that the option
had been unchecked. The name "Application Data" was still there but it was greyed
out. I checked the option again, clicked on "Apply" and exited the options menu.
Then I opened the options menu again and saw the the option was once again
unchecked. For some reason Richcopy would not save the state of that option.
Aside from that strange recursion problem with "Application Data", I have other
pathnames that exceed 255 chars. I'd like to be able to copy those. In any case,
attempts to filter those didn't work either. Looks like it's back to the drawing board
with Synctoy, Robocopy, Xcopy, etc. I saw a few references to XXcopy in this
thread; I think I'll take a look at that.
Richcopy version: 4.0.217.0
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
Have a good one,
Big Al Mintaka

Thursday, July 29, 2010 11:57 AM

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Hello,
I too have been experiencing similiar issues of random crashes with RichCopy 4.0. I
have been using RichCopy 3.5 (underground hack from MS) for years. It performed
faster and it did not have as many bug issues as 4.0. If you like RichCopy, I would
suggest searching for the 3.5 version.
I am kind of in the boat of searching for another product tool. I recently completed a
massive File Server migration and a bunch of files came over corrupted. I suspect
RichCopy 4.0 had something to do with this.
I found this link recently which helped in clearing up some questions about
RichCopy 4.0.
http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/readyhow-replicate-file-shares-usingmicrosoft-richcopy

Jason
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 2:22 PM
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For anyone who's experienced these errors:

Try increasing the buffer size in the settings for folder and file copy. After doing
this, I no longer experienced the 0xc0000005 exception errors and RichCopy is able
to complete.
I too experienced the frustrating RichCopy crashes when trying to copy a very large
file system from a Novell to a Windows server. The folder contained over 2.5
million files and was 1.7 terabytes large. With the default settings RichCopy would
crash about 1/3 of the way through the folder structure.
After increasing the buffers, I was able to run the copy to completion with 10
threads for folder search, copy and file copy.
There was *one* other change I made, and that was to run the application under
2008 SP1 (ie, no R2) compatibility mode. But I believe the buffer change is what
made the difference. If you find the program still crashes after increasing buffer
size, try running it in compatibility mode.
I'm using it on a 2008 R2 SP1 server to copy several multi-terabyte folders with
several million files in each. No more errors. :)
Cheers,
Brent
Sunday, June 19, 2011 2:33 PM
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Brent,
Good suggestion here. Can you check some random Word and Excel files to see if
they were corrupted during the copy process? That has been my biggest issue with
RichCopy v4.0 now and the primary reason for reverting back to Robocopy.
J

Jason
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 2:43 PM
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Hi Jason No, I have not experienced any file corruption issues (at least that I can tell). I've
used RichCopy recently with the settings I described to migrate a large department's
data from an old Novell server to Windows. The migrated folders are pretty heavily
used by several hundred users, and I have not had any reports of corrupted files.
I've continued to run the program with 2008 (non R2) compatibility mode, because
things are working and I need to get more data migrated off old servers. Later I

may try running RichCopy without compatibility mode to determine for sure
whether it was just the buffers tweaking in the settings that did the trick.
Cheers,
Brent

Thursday, June 23, 2011 7:54 PM

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Yikes!
Reading this post makes me wonder if i did the right thing by using RichCopy to
merge a restore tree with a live tree for a 100,000 user maildir restore!
So far 3,000,000 files in and it looks like its going ok but the logfile is at 800Mb
and I can't load it on the server yet.
I have 2 problems: A) it started great, stabilising at 8Mb /sec but now after 18Hrs of
processing its dropped to 2.2mb / sec.
B) it is using an excessive amount of ram now upto 2.6mb and pushing the system
ram to 15.6Gb out of 16Gb ram!
i can't see any reason why the speed should drop so dramatically.
does this mean its all going to explode beneath my feet before it completes?
And Why should it consume memory unless there is a memory leak?

Andy T
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 8:43 AM
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OK...
If anyone is interested, I found out why RichCopy was holding 2.6GB private
memory in Task Manager!! (Yes 2.6GB - not 2.6mb as I said before)
Basically it seems that Richcopy does not dispose of ram very efficiently and leaves
a lot of pages in standby cache.
You can see a lot of good information about your free / used ram by using
sysinternals RamMap Here: http://technet.microsoft.com/enus/sysinternals/ff700229
By clearing the Standby List, page list and working sets, this will free up most of
your ram giving you peace of mind that your server isn't going to explode in front of
you.
Ram is now sitting at 6 Gb of 16Gb whereas before it was 15.6Gb / 16Gb
Andy T
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 9:48 AM
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I have experienced the same problem as Big Al. I set all inclusion/exclusion
information and apply. When I hit "OK" and then review, all checked items are no
longer checked. The information and paths are still there but they are no longer
activated.
Any thoughts? Anyone?
Thursday, September 22, 2011 11:36 AM
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My thoughts, It is 1/2 baked like everything Microsoft. What I cannot deal with is ,
a file will skip "Path Not Found", and it is because the path is too long. (Microsoft
will let you create files paths > 255 charaters, but it will not let you copy those files,
because the core operating system is dumb. It can't even copy files that it creates.

Richcopy is dumb, because it gives no log or reason why the file was skipped. It
just says" Oh well, some of your stuff didn't copy over, I don't know what it was,
and I can't tell you why, but ur missing some of your stuff. Have a nice day". I am
off to find another file copy utility that hopefully can tell me what it can't copy
Saturday, October 22, 2011 1:51 PM
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I found a partial replacement for RichCopy. It's called FastCopy and was featured
on Helge Klein's (maker of SetACL) blog back in May 2011.
Saturday, October 22, 2011 5:44 PM
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I found a partial replacement for RichCopy. It's called FastCopy and was
featured on Helge Klein's (maker of SetACL) blog back in May 2011.
Most awsome program. Doesn't give a rat's whisker about file paths greater that
260!
Doesn't use Windows OS at all, you can throttle the speed and get some real
throughput with this program, plus A LOG IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 8:45 PM
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does anyone know if you can consolidate folders? For example, I have a SD card
from my camera. I put it in the card reader. I have a script that will first ask for the
name of the new folder you would like the script to create, then, it will take pictures
from multiple folders on the card and dump them into that newly created folder
without the card's folder structure. It just places all pics into the root of that new
folder, regardless of where they came from.
Doable?
thanks in advance,
joe
Thursday, December 01, 2011 2:16 AM
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For anyone who's experienced these errors:

Try increasing the buffer size in the settings for folder and file copy. After
doing this, I no longer experienced the 0xc0000005 exception errors and
RichCopy is able to complete.
I too experienced the frustrating RichCopy crashes when trying to copy a
very large file system from a Novell to a Windows server. The folder
contained over 2.5 million files and was 1.7 terabytes large. With the default
settings RichCopy would crash about 1/3 of the way through the folder
structure.
After increasing the buffers, I was able to run the copy to completion with
10 threads for folder search, copy and file copy.
There was *one* other change I made, and that was to run the application
under 2008 SP1 (ie, no R2) compatibility mode. But I believe the buffer
change is what made the difference. If you find the program still crashes
after increasing buffer size, try running it in compatibility mode.
I'm using it on a 2008 R2 SP1 server to copy several multi-terabyte folders
with several million files in each. No more errors. :)
Cheers,
Brent

Brent,

How do I increase the buffer size in RichCopy 4.0? I am unable to locate this
setting. Thanks
J

Jason
Friday, January 13, 2012 3:18 PM
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Make sure you selected Advanced under the view tab. That should give you more
functions under the options.
Thursday, January 19, 2012 7:48 PM
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Thanks for the reply. I have enabled the Advanced feature but I still don't see
anything that says "Buffer" size. Is the setting labeled as something else?

Jason
Friday, January 20, 2012 2:10 PM
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Hi,
Have problems to use the "Copy if timestamp is updated" It still copies all files in
the folder, and not only the new files that is the intention.
br
Mikael

Wednesday, May 09, 2012 3:06 PM

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OK...
If anyone is interested, I found out why RichCopy was holding 2.6GB
private memory in Task Manager!! (Yes 2.6GB - not 2.6mb as I said before)
Basically it seems that Richcopy does not dispose of ram very efficiently
and leaves a lot of pages in standby cache.
You can see a lot of good information about your free / used ram by using
sysinternals RamMap Here: http://technet.microsoft.com/enus/sysinternals/ff700229
By clearing the Standby List, page list and working sets, this will free up
most of your ram giving you peace of mind that your server isn't going to
explode in front of you.
Ram is now sitting at 6 Gb of 16Gb whereas before it was 15.6Gb / 16Gb
Andy T
Came here with the same results. My problem is now I have 80 servers that need the
mapped files cleared. Does anyone have a command line utility to clear the mapped
file table?
Friday, January 04, 2013 2:04 AM

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Would anyone be able to let me know if I am missing a setting? Trying to copy
some large files over a network... and when the connection drops.. I loose the
existing data, and has to start from scratch again. In a nutshell, I can pause and
resume while things are fine, but the moment I really lose the connections.. Back to
square one...
Just not sure if RichCopy leaves ... partials.
Running Default options. (Only with some mild exclusions of certain types of files)
Thank you
ML

o Edited by Matt Levine Tuesday, April 30, 2013 9:19 PM

Tuesday, April 30, 2013 6:00 PM
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este programa es bueno
pero tengo un inconveniente, quiero copiar archivos de nombres muy largos (mas de
260 caracteres), dentro de directorios tambin con nombres largos.
Pueden recomendar algun programa para hacer este trabajo
Gracias
Neil
Wednesday, June 12, 2013 6:39 PM
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Another software that I am sharing might also help you with some errors .Try and
download " Long Path Tool " is also useful in situations where you see these error
messages: Cannot read from source file or disk, there has been a sharing violation,
cannot delete file or folder, the file name you specified is not valid or too long,
the source or destination file may be in use and many other file managing errors.

Sunday, September 01, 2013 3:35 PM

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Great utility, amazing speeds but one small issue preventing me from using...
Is it possible to prevent RichCopy from overwriting a file in the destination if the
date/time is newer than the source. I see hundreds of possible exceptions/error
handling. But that one seems to be missing.
Thanks
Friday, October 04, 2013 3:22 PM
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Is there a way to use RichCopy to copy files between RDP mounted local drive (on
the RDP client PC) and drives on the remote PC (the RDP server)? Somehow
RichCopy (installed using default options) does not see the RDP mounted drive (for
example C on clientpc).
Thanks!

Thursday, February 27, 2014 6:33 PM

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Hello, this is a great app. Would it also be possible to add copying To multiple
server locations?
Tuesday, July 08, 2014 4:54 PM
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This was my problem as well. I had 8 GB RAM on my server, RichCopy consumed
ALL of it and started to skip files (I am guessing this was the reason). I upgraded to
16 GB RAM, again same issue! Task Manager shows only about 1 GB consumed by
all process and less than 10 MB by RichCopy!
I downloaded RAMMap and only "Empty Working Sets". Worked like a charm. I
recovered 11 GB RAM within seconds.
THANKS SO MUCH FOR SHARING!!!
Monday, July 14, 2014 6:09 PM
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Hi
I am getting the below error. You'll have to piece the URL back together...
I have went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\COMPONENTS and
removed PendingXmlIdentifier. NextQueueEntryIndex,
AdvancedInstallersNeedResolving were not present.
http:// s27.postimg .
org/3xqrqfbvn/2014_09_03_02_20_09_Microsoft_Rich_Copy_4_0.png
Wednesday, September 03, 2014 6:26 AM

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I've seen issues with Application Data repeating over and over, and it is not a
Richcopy problem. I believe it has to do with junctions or symlinks. Windows uses
symlinks for most of the special directories - documents, music, etc. If you have
upgraded from other windows versions or done something else that recreates these
directories, you end up getting multiple copies of the directories and symlinks.
Typically, only one of the copies for each is valid and the other points to some
invalid location.
Essentially, if you have a never ending Application Data path, it is symlink related.
I was able to fix my issue with Application Data forever recursing, but it was not
easy and required changing settings all over the place as many settings were
pointing to them.
Thursday, November 06, 2014 8:39 PM
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Does anyone know WHY Rich copy won't keep the permissions of the original
owner of the file? When I do a copy which by the way works perfectly, when I drill
down to see the owner of the file on the copy it changes it to the administrator. I
need the owner of the file to remain. Does anyone know if secure copy does this?
Wednesday, December 17, 2014 3:29 PM
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Any of you having trouble with this may want to try "teracopy"
http://codesector.com/teracopy or http://download.cnet.com/TeraCopy/30002248_4-10671835.html as it handles as many files as you wish, and buffers them for
increased speed.
Saturday, February 14, 2015 3:51 AM
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