Robocopy replaces XCopy in the newer versions of windows
- Uses Mirroring, XCopy does not
- Has a /RH option to allow a set time for the copy to run
- Has a /MON:n option to check differences in files
- Copies over more file attributes than XCopy
The most important difference is that robocopy will (usually) retry when an error occurs, whilexcopy will not. In most cases, that makes robocopy far more suitable for use in a script.
If you have XP or Windows Server you can easily get this in the Resource Kits. If you have Vista, it's
already in your path. That's always nice. It's Robust,
indeed (hence, Robocopy) but it's legendarily unforgiving. If anything
is wrong with the command line options you'll just get the help. It's so
hard to use there's even
a GUI Frontend you can get. However, when I want to get a directory
from here to over there, I just do this (no wildcards allowed! Doh!) and
it just gets there, auto skipping files that are already at the
destination. It's also wonderful over an unreliable
network:
robocopy "H:\Source" "z:\Dest" /S /ZWhere /s means subdirectories, and /z means in restartable mode.
Ruden