Robocopy: The Ultimate Guide from an IT Veteran

My Go-To Robocopy Command for Migrations

I didn’t have time to copy everything again. So I used this powerful command:

robocopy \\OldServer\Data \\NewServer\Data /E /Z /ZB /R:5 /W:5 /TBD /NP /V /MT:64

Let me break down why this magic spell works:

• /E copies all subdirectories, even empty ones.
• /Z and /ZB allow it to restart interrupted copies. Essential for networks.
• /MT:64 is the secret weapon. It uses 64 threads! This makes it incredibly fast.
• /R:5 /W:5 tells it to only retry 5 times with a short wait. This saves hours.

I ran this command. In less than an hour, it analyzed the entire 4TB structure. It then copied only the changed files. The final sync took minutes.

The migration was a complete success Monday morning. All thanks to Robocopy.