Recent Windows versions have a special service (Volume Shadow Service? Use Google!) for this problems, it allows you to take some kind of snapshot of the filesystem. All modifications after the snapshot do not affect your program, so you can safely copy files from a mounted filesystem. Of course, this service can't guarantee that all open files are in a consistent state.

Regarding your locked Access database: Shut down the service, then backup or make at least a copy of the database file, then restart the service and exclude the original, locked file.

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

In reply to Re^3: File::Copy - locked files by afoken
in thread File::Copy - locked files by packetstormer

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