Windows 10: Anyone familair with robocopy?

let me explain what im trying to do.

I have a ton of data sequestered on different hard drives (apart from my system drive) and this obviously helps me have data backed up and helps me when/if i need to format by saving a tremendous amount of time.

Unfortunately due to costs theyre all mechanical HDD's which can fail at a moments notice and put years of work a tons of data at risk. (plus theyre getting full).

Ive managed to ship some stuff to the cloud, and otherstuff ive backed up in multiple places. The last thing I have left to take care of before I start upgrading drives is to copy all my hierarchy/directory trees.

If i ever had dataloss having these available would make "returning to form" (for lack of a better phrase) much easier. (i have a bad memory).

Anyways, without any more carrying on - Ive used xcopy in the past with success. Now ive tried using robocopy but Im hititng a snag.

I plan to create a "folder structure" folder and inside it have individual folders with all my drive letters. D, T, U, etc.

Inside each of those folders will be the folder tree I have on said drives. Then I'll take the conglomeration of folders "folder structure folder" and put it in the cloud, on a usb stick, etc.

The specific folder im having trouble with - which is the first one I tried and the reason im posting. I expect to have the same issue with others going forward so I figured id better ask for some help.

I use robocopy "U:" "C:\Users\klepp\Desktop\U" /e /xf *

This began copying over all my folders but it stopped at a folder called "System Volume Information" and went on about permissions and retrying in 30 seconds which obviously continued to fail.

From what I gather this is a hidden folder present on every disk which means I'll run into this on each disk who's structure I try to copy.

After all that long-windedness, my question is how can I omit that folder from being copied?

Thank you!

:)

 

Make font Bold for Windows 10 Version 1709

Thanks for all of this information.

I will reread everything and check out the links provided. I hesitate to download software I am not familair with but will research what you give anyway.

 

Screen capture for Nokia 5230 Nuron?

Thx, scoobyman! That's the exact (working) one I found and was about to post up, but thanks for the help anywho!



It works perfectly, BTW, but for any not familair with it yet, just be sure to have the app open in landscape mode if one wants to grap a cap of the whole screen. Took me 3 tries to figure that out, LOL.



Thanks again, dude!



deg

 

Do you have 'show hidden folders' enabled? If so, see if not showing them helps.

Copying a drive/to a drive can be done, but Robocopy is better at being a folder to folder copy. It should also avoid your problem. See if this helps, it is for Windows 7 but works the same on Windows 10. ROBOCOPY - Create Backup Script - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

Yes, that's a hidden system folder. And ordinarily it's permissions won't let you (or robocopy) inside.
And anyway you don't want to back it up. Ever.
It contains restore points, which are unusable as a backup.

 

I know what the folder is, but I am saying see if you can not have it showing when you try to copy your U drive

I edited my post above, see if any of that helps.

 

Hey guys, thanks for the replies. Ironically A) i never considered that (the fact its a hidden folder as I do have hidden folders enabled) but B) in explorer it still doesnt show up if I click on my U drive for example. I def dont have "show protected OS files" enabled.

Regardless I'll disable that and see if it makes a difference. If it does, great. If not ill visit that link and look at the script.

Thanks again very much!

 

Have you tried the GUI of Robocopy it can make doing scripts simple Utility Spotlight: Robocopy GUI

 

Well I did 2 things. 1) disabled show hidden folders 2) ran cmd as admin (may have done this before, not sure so not sure which I can attribute it "partially" working to.

Basically i created a plain jane empty U folder on my desktop. Partially as a test with my least sensitive backup drive and partially so I can do them all individually, keep track, and then move all the "folders of folders" to a perma-backup area.

This being said, the minute I hit "enter" on the cmd prompt, my U folder on the desktop disappeared. The copy did go through fine and it disappeared due to it still copying the System Volume Information folder. I was able to "see" it by enabling "protected OS files" so theres that.

Now I'm going to look at the posted link, but irrespective of that - if i were to be forced into doing it the way I just did, no harm would come from simply disabling the System Volume Information folder in the empty/copied to directory right? I imagine this would make it "un" hidden. EDIT - deleting the SVI folder def does not un-hide it. Cant even select the hidden checkbox in properties, greyed out ;P

Not the most elegant solution but its where I'm at atm

 

Nope, im an anal/ocd SoB. I really try to keep installed programs to a minimum. Im going to take a look though cause if its portable it may be worth hanging onto ;p

Though there is something to be said about using the command line. I try to learn things n all... lol.

 

I use RoboCopy in a batch file to backup my user folder. There's a couple of pitfalls to be aware of. You've already found the 'retries' one. The default is a million retries waiting 30 seconds between each (that's nearly a year!). NTUser.dat was the file that it caught me out on. There's some switches to deal with that...

...I skip locked files with /R:0 (which would probably have fixed your 'System Volume Information' problem too).

The other problem I had was an infinite recursion (well, until the maximum path length was exceeded) of particular folders on the destination drive. These were caused by what look like links to 'My Music', 'My Pictures', etc. in the Documents folder. They're not links, they are Junction Points, there's a switch to deal with that too.

Type RoboCopy /? for the full list.

 

While tedious to set up, and unable to be used if I add a new main folder (without editing) as opposed to being able to do the entire drive (with a way to omit SVI) the batch file method seems to be the win.

I did look into a GUI tool but it didnt really save me any trouble as it only allowed me to add a folder at a time and the one I viewed didnt have the exclude file option anyhow (had to be added manually)

I also looked at robocopy gui but it required an install. meh. Batch it is. Lets me learn a bit more and tailor it to my needs. It seems the /e and /xf * copied all the folders but didnt keep them nested properly so i gotta figure that out

I appreciate pointing me in the right direction though, very much so *Smile

 

lol this may be helpful. Might be able to point me back to my original method. Nothing ventured nothing gained they say. If nothing else im learning and thats always a win when you have a terroristic toddler interrupting your "alone" time every 90 seconds ;p

 

If it helps, my batch files's commands for a full backup of all files and folders from the current location down (I'm in my user folder when I run it) are:

Code: attrib +A *.* /s robocopy . <drive:\path> *.* /xjd /s /e /m /r:0[/quote] The first command sets the Archive attribute for all files, /S does it for all subdirectories.
For the RoboCopy command the . specifies the current directory as the source, the options I use mean:

For subsequent incremental backups I omit the attrib command and the /e for robocopy so that only modified files (and the folders containing them) get copied.

 

The first command sets the Archive attribute for all files, /S does it for all subdirectories.
For the RoboCopy command the . specifies the current directory as the source, the options I use mean:

For subsequent incremental backups I omit the attrib command and the /e for robocopy so that only modified files (and the folders containing them) get copied.[/quote] thank you again for the reply

what does the archive attribute accomplish/do?

In the end, what worked for me - or at least got me past the specific issue i was having (thus far) was doing the following

robocopy U:\ C:\Users\klepp\Desktop\U /e /xf * /a-:sh /xd "System Volume Information"

even with excluding the SVI directory the folder kept disappearing in its entirety. I had to add the remove hidden attribute and now it works fine. (added the -s switch as a "just in case" considering the reasons im using it at current i imagine it has a much higher potential to cause an issue than help anything)

Now to try and get all folders im copying into a batch and try out this /xo thing. In the future, perhaps start adding files instead of folder heirarchy.

Seriously glad I got to learn a little somethin somethin *Smile