Robocopy or Robust File and Folder Copy application is very popular amongst Windows system administrators. Robocopy will copy the local or given file to the remote or destination location.
robocopy Features
The command robocopy provides very useful features for files copying over network. Below we will list some of them.
Resume Interrupted Copy when the network or remote host is down during a copy the copy operation can resume where it left.
Aug 24, 2019 Windows Server 2008 & 2008 R2. Windows Server 2012 & 2012 R2. Windows Server 2016. Note: Earlier version also supports Robocopy, you need to download the robocopy command from Windows Resource Toolkit or Microsoft Website. Robocopy oldserver Users$ D: home Users$ /E /SEC /COPYALL /MIR /V /ETA /TEE /ITEM /MT:6 /LOG:Userlog.txt. Where D is the local disk on the new server. Command is run from the new server. When I run this - all that happens is 'nothing'. No action, no error, just in the CMD window the next prompt. Feb 06, 2015 Online peer support For online peer support, join The Official Scripting Guys Forum! To provide feedback or report bugs in sample scripts, please start a new discussion on the Discussions tab for this script.
Preserve File Attributes and timestamp of the copied file where owner and audit information is also preserved.
Ability To Update Copied File Attributes and Timestamps of the copied files and folders which will set to the latest date and time.
Administrator Owned File Copy is supported with the option /B.
Mirror Mode is provided to sync or mirror given files and folder or directory updated files will be updated and deleted files will be deleted on the target.
Skip Allready Existing Files by checking size and timestamp information and comparing it to the source and target.
Progress Bar will shown current copy operation graphically.
Multi-threaded copying which will allow copy, mirror multiple files and directories at the same time which will decrease the complete copy operation time.
robocopy Command Syntax
The general syntax of robocopy command is like below.
- SOURCE is the source file or directory we want to copy
- DESTINATION is the destination file or directory we want to copy
- OPTIONS are different features or behaviors we want to use like recursive, verbose, extension filter, etc.
Copy Specified Folder
Robocopy Download Server 2012 R2 Iso
The most basic operation with robocopy is copying sources folders to the destination. In this example, we will copy the directory named mytest to the destination folder yourtest
After copy operation, some statistics are provided by robocopy
Startshows start time of copy operationSourceshows source directoryDestshows destination directoryFilesshows file filterOptionsshows given optionsTotalshows total files and folders countCopiedshows copied files and folders countSkippedshows not copied files and folders
Copy From Local System To Remote System
We can also copy a file and folders to the remote system. We will provide a remote system hostname or IP address before the destination path. We can use BACKUPSERVER or 10.5.2.30 to specify the remote system.
In this example, we will copy the source directory named mytest to the remote system with IP address 192.168.122.46 under the path Usersismail with the named yourtest .
Copy Only Given File Types or Extensions
robocopy provides some filtering features while copying files. We can specify the filenames and extensions we want to copy. This will skip other file names and extensions. We will provide the file name or extension after the destination folder.
In this example, we only want to copy *.txt extension files.
We can see from the output that only one file is copied but there was more than one file. Copied file name and byte count is also printed.
Copy SubFolders
By default, only first level directories are copied to the destination. If we need to copy all level and subdirectories folders we should enable /S.
List Files
There is a very useful feature for robocopy where source files are not copied and just listed. This feature can be useful if we want to check existing files and folders. We can use /L option to print the list of files and directories.
As we can see from the output that all files and folders are skipped and not copied.
List Files Recursively
While robocopy is mainly used to copy files from remote to local or local to remove we can use /L and /S options in order to list remote files. We can merge two options list and recursive to list all level files and folders.
Copy Files Lower Than Given Size
While copying files we can specify the size of files we want to copy. In this example we will copy files those sizes are lower than 1K . We will use the /MAX option for this.
As we can see from the results some of the files are copied but some of them are not copied because of the size restriction.
Copy Files Higher Than Given Size
The reverse of the previous option is /MIN option . This will only copy files higher than the given size. In this example, we will copy files higher than 1K which is 1000 kilobytes.
Move Files
Robocopy Download Server 2012 R2 End Of Life
The default behavior of robocopy is copying files. Sometimes we may need to move files. This can be done with robocopy too. We will provide /MOV option in order to move files and folders.
Logging Operations
While doing copy and move operations we can also need some logs, especially in bulk data operations. We can write a log about specified operations with /LOG option. We can also specify the log file name y adding at the end of /LOG option. In this example, we will write robocopy operation log to log file named backup.log . This will prevent regular output
The log file can be listed with type command in MS-DOS command line like below.
Copy Given File Properties
Files and folders may have different properties. These properties can be used for different purposes like the listing owner, audit information, timestamps, etc. We can copy these attributes too with the robocopy command. Here are the attributes we can specify for the copy. We will also use /copy: option by adding the property we want to copy.
Dis used to copy data propertiesAused for attributesTfor time stampsSis used for NTFS access control list simply ACLOis used for the owner informationUis used for Auditing information
In this example, we will copy time stamp attributes or properties with the following command.
Copy All Attributes with /copyall
We can also copy files with all properties of attributes with the /copyall parameter like below. This is equal to the /copy:DATSOU.
Delete or Remove Destination Files and Directories That No Longer Exist In The Source
If we are trying to make an identical copy of the local files and directories to the remote we need to purge or remove remote files and directories that no longer exist in the source. We can use /purge option for this.