Tutorials Robocopy - The windows command-line based file-folder copy-replace utility

[mobi0001]

I found this semi-tutorial and details of long time based tool/utility of the windows command-line over at https://blog.bakhai.co.in/post/robocopy

I have been an avid teracopy user over the years, as the usual windows cr*p of 255 is sick.

Anyways, too much talk, and other than few stuffs, rest all of the tutorial and guidance is based on the post found at the blog above.

ROBOCOPY was introduced by windows sometime before Windows NT 4.0, in different ways, and as a stable one since 4.0, in its resource pack.

Created by Kevin Allen and first released as part of the Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit, it has been a standard feature of Windows since Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

The command is

robocopy

Syntax​

By default Robocopy will only copy a file if the source and destination have different time stamps or different file sizes.

Syntax

ROBOCOPY Source_folder Destination_folder [files_to_copy] [options]

Key

file(s)_to_copy : A list of files or a wildcard.

(defaults to copying *.*)

cmd

robocopy <source> <destination> [<file>[ ...]] [<options>]

For example, to copy a file named yearly-report.mov from c:reports to a file share marketingvideos while enabling multi-threading for higher performance (with the /mt parameter) and the ability to restart the transfer in case it's interrupted (with the /z parameter), type:

dos

robocopy c:reports 'marketingvideos' yearly-report.mov /mt /z

Here are some examples of usage, which is not case-sensitive. If more than one option is specified, they must be separated by spaces.

Copy directory contents of the source Directory A to the destination Directory B (including file data, attributes and timestamps), recursively with empty directories (/E):

Robocopy "C:Directory A" "C:Directory B" /E

If directory names have non-standard characters, such as spaces, they must be enclosed in double quotes, as is usual in the command line.

Copy directory recursively (/E), copy all file information (/COPYALL, equivalent to /COPYATSOU, D=Data, A=Attributes, T=Timestamps, S=Security=NTFS ACLs, O=Owner info, U=Auditing info), do not retry locked files (/R:0) (the number of retries on failed copies default value is 1 million), preserve original directories' Timestamps (/DCOPY:T - requires version XP026 or later):

Robocopy C:A C:B /COPYALL /E /R:0 /DCOPY:T

Mirror A to B, destroying any files in B that are not present in A (/MIR), copy files in resume mode (/Z) in case network connection is lost:

Robocopy C:A backupserverB /MIR /Z

For the full reference, see the Microsoft TechNet Robocopy page: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy

More information can be found at:
1. SS64 Manpage https://ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html
2. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy

Credits: Boggled Mind Blogger for the original blog.