How to copy large amounts of files in Windows

Robocopy is one of those commands that is often known about, but mis-used. Let's go over all the common options and do a little speed test.

[ChrisTitusTech]

It should be noted and I missed it in the video. If you are copying TONs of very small 1-100kb files you can completely turn off logging with /NFL /NDL /NJH /NJS - This will 10-100x the speed, but at the cost of logging.
NFL = No File List
NDL = No Directory List
NJH = No Job Header
NJS = No Job Summary.
You can copy 100, 000s to millions of small files extremely fast, but will have no summary or log.

[TheDaNuker]

Been using this tool, especially the mirror + copy all attributes to make backups and matching with logfiles to verify all the file copying ever since it was a downloadable tool for Windows XP. A really great commandline tool that really should have a GUI wrapper in the modern age for the less tech savvy.

[sleekspeed]

This was so helpful. Unfortunately 2 weeks late for me. I ran into issue doing a multi terrabyte copy for my NAS migration. I got around it by zipin gup the folders and unziping them to the new destination. Robocopy would have been much smarter and faster. This was awesome! Thanks so much for sharing.

[markb]

This just reminds me of how we used to copy files from drive to drive back in the day using 3.11 in DOS :)

[old_geeky_Michael]

Been using Windows for decades and never knew about robocopy, thanks.

[tularem]

You can double click the icon in the title bar to close a window.
Just thought I'd throw that out there since Chris was right clicking the title bar of a window with the controls off-screen, and choosing close.

[AbdicateDotNet]

Thank you!!! I had a NAS hard drive die - despite having multiple backups, the VMDK file on the drive was the ONLY corrupted spot on the disk! I loathed COPY and PASTE to another computer/drive, and this has saved my bacon!! Thank you!!!! 👏👏

[Gryfang]

I've been using this since Server 2003R2 days. Once small caveat to the video is that there are times when you may want to turn off security all together. Like if you're copying user home folders from an old file server to a new one on a different domain prior to a user migration. I also might add that using robocopy in a scheduled task with a service account works well if you want a copy of something to go somewhere else to be backed up. No not as a backup itself, but a copy to be backed up there too. It's a powerful tool, and one that so many admins don't use or forget about using. DFS has gotten better, but it still has quirks (child/forest file copies are garbage), where robocopy will still succeed every time.

[BlankBrain]

I was using shared drives to access my NAS and copy files around. I recently installed Synology Drive to synchronize my laptop to my NAS. So far, so good. The only thing missing is a way to synchronize my Android phone to my NAS. I currently have to dedicate space on my laptop and use Syncthing to sync my phone to the laptop, then the laptop to the NAS.

My "big" file structure is about 300 GB (so far) of music albums stored as FLAC. There are all sorts of challenges with long filenames for classical music. Some people have overloaded the filename field with too much information. I shorten filenames when I rip the CDs. There are alternate character sets used for some albums, such as Blue Oyster Cult. These played havoc with my old Debian-based NAS.

I wish there was a way to put all my music in a database AND be able to play it back. The file system Music > Artist > Albums > Tracks is cumbersome at best. I actually added two folders to the structure to keep software from failing. I use Music > (A-M and N-Z) > Artist > Albums > Tracks. I may have to spit things again.

[thisismelsemail]

I feel like for normal day to day file copying tasks this would be kinda overkill. In the example you gave of that 5GB file you saved roughly 10-20 seconds. It would take that long just to type everything out for the command thusly not saving anytime at all. Now I can clearly see the huge professional level applications for such a thing for sure. Just not sure if this is worth it for the average user. Thank you for teaching me something about windows I didn't know though! Really enjoyed the video nonetheless

[Junse]

The one thing I miss in Robocopy is what rsync have, the --backup-dir option so that "deleted" files are actually moved to another location.

[dallasroberts]

This is so very much appreciated. I just want to copy everything on an older smaller drive to a new larger one... but NOT lose any of the dates in any way. Sounds simple... been hard. I will test my method first before I go "BIG".

[pcmv]

I dunno I would rather stick to Teracopy since it does all of what you say but wit a gui. Most probably would want to avoid command line for something like this and anything more important there is backup software better suited.

[krishnar]

I love this channel. I have learnt so many things from this channel ❤

[tristandunn]

Robocopy rocks. Have been using it since it was a part of the Windows 2000 Resource Kit. Was pleased to see it promoted into default install of Windows. One useful switch is /XO (exclude older files). Prevents an older file from overwriting a newer one.

Also, if you don't use the in-built logging function and just pipe the output into a file yourself with >, switch off the progress (NP). If you don't, you'll get loads of percentage counts in your log file and it looks a horrific mess!!

[romulofernandes]

Not gonna lie, I tought that I would never use this when I saw your video, until I had to backup my sister's external hdd.
This is a god sent, the only thing that I miss is a general progress bar to the whole process...

[stevedixon]

The GUI copy will not preserve security settings most of the time, usually just replacing the source ACL's with the target folders ACL instead. Very bad if you need those ACL's preserved intact.

I used robocopy extensively to migrate a file server with over 2 TB of roaming profiles years ago. Did one pass to get the bulk data mirrored to the new system (ran overnight, took hours), command saved for later use. Later we just ran it again and again to get the modified files (took minutes each time). The ability to save logs each run helped us sort out a number of access issues reliably in the end too (use /NDL and /NFL to only log errors and the summary).

You can also use it (in rare cases) to salvage data from unreliable systems or drives as it can resume or at least skip files already copied. Had to do this ONE TIME to get data off a system with failing raid drives (lesson here is to actually check your raid and hardware logs regularly and not wait to the alarms to sound, yellow and red drive lights don't always get noticed). We managed to save all but two files if I recall correctly but it was touch and go for sure.

[ewenchan]

53.05 seconds vs. 52.07 seconds.

1.84% faster.

Interesting.

It would be interesting to see how much faster robocopy would be if you are saying using 10 GbE and passing data through a system in order to sync up two servers (or migrate the data) say from one NAS server to a bigger, newer, NAS server.

[mikechinym]

nice tutorial video...thanks chris. just share my experience, i use "fastcopy" written by japanese, it do able to handle long file name as well. hence, it have a log in notepad for each file copied.... and lots of great features...

[FacelookHK]

I use fastcopy and it has a GUI and it syncs files.