Robocopy examples
Sync target with source (will delete files in target)
robocopy "{:Source:}" "{:Target:}" /mir /copy:{:CopyFlags:} /r:{:RetryCount:} /w:{:WaitTime:}
Sync target with source (will delete files in target) and log the results
robocopy "{:Source:}" "{:Target:}" /mir /copy:{:CopyFlags:} /r:{:RetryCount:} /w:{:WaitTime:} /tee /np "/{:LoggingMode:}:{:LogFileFullPath:}"
Common configuration switches
| Switch | Description |
|---|---|
| /S | Copy subdirectories |
| /E | Copy subdirectories (including empty ones) |
| /MIR | Mirror directory tree (delete files/folders from target that no longer exist in source) |
| /Z | Copy files in restartable mode |
| /ZB | Copy files in restartable mode but fail back to backup mode if access denied |
| /R:{:RetryCount:} | Retry {:RetryCount:} times (default is 1000000) |
| /W:{:WaitTime:} | Wait {:WaitTime:} seconds between retries (default is 30 seconds) |
| /TBD | Wait for share names to be defined (for retry error 67) |
| /NP | No progress to be displayed for file copies |
| /V | Verbose output (including skipped files) |
| /TEE | Output to console as well as output as well as log file |
| /XF “{:ExcludeFiles:}” | Exclude files matching {:ExcludeFiles:} (can use * wildcard) |
| /XD “{:ExcludeDirs:}” | Exclude directories matching {:ExcludeDirs:} (can use * wildcard) |
| /LOG:{:LogFileFullPath:} | Output results to log file (be sure to properly escape whitespace when using this) |
| /LOG+:{:LogFileFullPath:} | Append results to log file (be sure to properly escape whitespace when using this) |
| /UNILOG:{:LogFileFullPath:} | Output results to log file (be sure to properly escape whitespace when using this) |
| /UNILOG+:{:LogFileFullPath:} | Append results to log file (be sure to properly escape whitespace when using this) |
For a more complete reference I recommend: https://ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html
Regex search for errors in output log
If you would like to search your output log for errors I have used the below regex (tested in Notepad++):
ERROR \d+ \(0x\d+\)
Unicode file notes
When using Unicode logging on some older systems the output file may appear to be gibberish. The PoweShell fix I have used for this (source here) is:
$bytes = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes('C:\Temp\RoboCopy.log')
$len = $bytes.Length
$text = [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString($bytes,2,$len -2)
$text | Out-File -FilePath 'C:\Temp\RoboCopyFixed.log'