Popular copy commad do (for the first look) the same with one difference. It can’t handle copying recursive directories. For resolving this issue, microsoft has released newer version of this tool called Xcopy (eXtended Copy). The new one is present in Windows up to today and helps me in situation, which looks as hopeless (for example when the GUI copy methods fail). It has one serious issue. It raises error cited in post title. It is reported when copied file has absolute path (including the drive letter) longer than 254 characters. Because novadays file systems handles longer path, this factitiously small issue comes to really hard problem.
Solution is, of course, find an alternative tool what will have similar syntax. First shot was xxcopy what behaves similars, not exactly the same way. This one has failings too. Most important of them is fact that it requires license for some important features. Closer info can be obtained from program home site.

Tool what I suggest to all (happy 😉 ) Windows 7 Users and (not) happy users of Windows Vista is Robocopy. It is available for users of those systems as buildin one. Others can obtain it as part of resource kit. This tool, what name is derivied from “Robust File Copy”, is really powerfull during manipulation with huge number of files. Good description of it can be found in Wikipedia.