One of the most annoying things I've always hated about windows explorer file transfers was:   You have this 8 hour transfer of data.  So you start it off and go to bed.  At 7 hours 50 minutes it hits a file "Do you wish to replace?"   So when you wake up, you got nowhere.

In Windows 7 I see they do all the files that can copy then ask the question at the end.  Which is ok except in the case where 90% of the transfer is replacing files.

I was thinking for nautilus, since the same sort of situation exists, would it be possible to scan the files/folders before starting the transfer to ask all the questions up front.  or detect the transfer is large and ask defaulting questions (merge/skip existing folders?  replace/skip existing files?)