Introduction

Robocopy also is known as Robust File Copy Command. By using Robocopy Windows Command Line utility we can copy files, directories and even drives too from one location to another location.

Robocopy is a Windows command-line tool used for file and folder Replication.

Robocopy is one of the most-used command-line utilities to copy/sync large volumes of data in Windows.

It’s such a well-liked tool due to how powerful it’s. But it is complex as much as it’s power

Robocopy helps to maintain identical copies of a directory structure on a single PC or in a separate network location.

In this tutorial-Article, we’re going to make it simpler as much as it’s complexity. After reading this complete and ultimate Robocopy guide, You will be able to use Robocopy Command with ease

It’s a replacement to the less versatile xcopy utility.

It allows you to specify a drive path or server path to copy/move files to a command prompt.

Robocopy command is able to classify files by whether they exist in the source directory or in the destination directory, or in both

Robocopy Versions

The versions of Robocopy are as below.

Several versions of Robocopy do not report the version number when executing robocopy /? on the command line.

However, their version is stored inside the executable itself and can be queried with PowerShell for example (gcm robocopy | fl *) or inside Windows Explorer by right-clicking on Robocopy.exe, selecting Properties, then clicking on the Details tab.

Robocopy Features

Robocopy Commandline utility can

Robocopy command line utility can copy files over a network with resume capabilities ( I personally have used in between India-USA office over VPN and working fine to sync svn repo)

Robocopy command can copy file and directory attributes preserving timestamps

Robocopy command can copy NTFS permissions, owners and auditing info

Robocopy command Can copy directory timestamps

Robocopy Can copy files in ‘backup’ mode to ensure files are copied even those rights have been denied to the administrator

Robocopy command can make Automatic retries,Can sync two folders,Is smart enough to skip files already copied,Can copy paths larger than the 256 character path limit,Perform asynchronous copies using it’s multithreading ability.

Robocopy command can Returns standardized exit codes for use in scripts

A continuously updated command-line progress indicator.

A “mirror” mode, which keeps trees synchronized by also deleting files in the destination that are not present in the source.

Ability to tolerate network interruptions and resume copy (incomplete files are marked with a date stamp of 1980-01-01 and contain a recovery record so Robocopy knows where to continue from).

Ability to copy file data and attributes correctly, and to preserve original timestamps, as well as NTFS ACLs, owner information, and audit information using the /COPYALL or /COPY: command line switches.

Beginning with the XP026 version, the ability to copy folder (or directory) date and timestamps (/DCOPY:T), even with the ability to update folder timestamps (copied from existing folders) on folders already created from previous versions (that did not copy the folder date and timestamps).

Ability to assert the Windows NT “backup right” (/B) so an administrator may copy an entire directory, including files denied readability to the administrator.

Ability to copy paths exceeding 259 characters — up to a theoretical limit of about 32,000 characters — without errors.

Multithreaded copying introduced with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.[2]

Return code on program termination for batch file usage.

Usefile names, wildcard characters,paths,or file attributes to include or exclude source files as candidates for copying.

exclude directories by name of by path

delete source files and directories after copying(that is,move rather than copy them)
Delete destination files and directories that no longer exist in the source.
Control the number of times the program retries an operation after encountering a recoverable network error.

Schedule copy jobs to run automatically

Specify when copying is to be performed
Monitor a directory tree for changes.

Download Robocopy

Robocopy Syntax

Run Robocopy Help command robocopy /? And you will have a multiple options.

When you check each section, you will have a more options in each section.

robocopy <Source> <Destination> [<File>[ …]] [<Options>]

Copy Option

File Selection Options

Retry Options

Logging options

Job Options

Exit (return) codes

Note: Any value greater than 8 indicates that there was at least one failure during the copy operation.

Example 1

To copy two files from folder c:\xyz to c:\xyz, the following syntax is used:

robocopy c:\xyz c:\xyz test1.txt test2.db

Example 2

Copy All PDFs

robocopy c:\xyz c:\xyz *.pdf

Example 3

To copy all files (not directories) in the “xyz” directory to the “xyz2” directory

robocopy c:\xyz c:\xyz2

Example 4

Robocopy Command to copy all files and folders (including empty ones) will be copied from the “xyz” directory to the “xyz2” directory

robocopy c:\xyz c:\xyz2 /e

Example 5

Robocopy command to mirror what is in c:\xyz into c:\xyz2 and purge any files in the xyz2 directory that do not exist in the XYZ directory. Becareful when yoou use /mir switch since it is deleting files that do not match in the destination directory.

robocopy c:\xyz c:\xyz2 /MIR

robocopy c:\xyz c:\xyz2 /MIR /Sec (copy permissions too)

robocopy c:\xyz c:\xyz2 /MIR /Sec /w:0 /r:0 ( wasting time on re-tries use w:0 and r:0 flag to skip if unable to copy due to any reason. )

Example 6

Robocopy command to copy any of the files in the xyz directory on the network computer named PC1 to the current computer xyz2 directory.

robocopy \\PC1\xyz C:\xyz2

Example 7

To get logs in a file and console too

robocopy c:\xyz c:\xyz2 /MIR /Sec /w:0 /r:0   /log:c:\Logs\xyz.log (To get logs in a file)

robocopy c:\xyz c:\xyz2 /MIR /Sec /w:0 /r:0   /log:c:\Logs\xyz.log /tee (To get log in a console)

Example 8

To exclude folder

robocopy c:\xyz c:\xyz2 /MIR /Sec /w:0 /r:0   /log:c:\Logs\xyz.log /tee /XD “\\PC1\xyz\~snapshot (To exclude snapshot folder)

Conclusion

I have tried to cover Robocopy command in depth. I hope It will be useful to my readers. Comments and suggestions are always appreciated! I want to add Robocopy GUI and some useful ROBOCOPY Scripts too. But it will become more lengthy. So I will write and share later.