Windows 10: question about robocopy behavior...

I was trying to do a quick backup of my documents folder, so decided to use robocopy with the /MIR switch: robocopy C:\Users\Brian\Documents D:\Backups\X390\Current\Documents /MIR It was taking a really long time, and what I discovered is that robocopy also backed up my pictures and video folders, as "My Pictures" and "My Videos" as subfolders of "Documents." Since the pictures folder (and all others) are separate folders at C:\Users\Brian\Pictures, etc., why is robocopy seeing them as subfolders of "Documents?" I played around with it a little bit, but didn't come up with a way to only get "Documents"--is there a way to do this?

:)

 

question about robocopy behavior...

@RolandJS is absolutely correct. 'My Music', 'My Pictures' and 'My Videos' are junctions, and RoboCopy will copy them as if they are folders.

The way to tell RoboCopy to ignore junctions is to add the /XJD switch to your command line. Type RoboCopy /? for more details.

 

question about robocopy behavior...

Well, bingo! I've been using Windows basically since it began, and never heard of "Junctions." I Googled it, and still don't really get it, or why it is there, but I was able to reproduce your screen shot of the command prompt showing those folders as Junctions. I added the /XJD switch after /MIR, and sure enough, just a very quick update of my Documents folder backup.

Thank you!

 

Robocopy speed question

I have 2 large files (total 210 GB) being copied by Robocopy between 2 external drives. Task Manager under "Disk" indicates a transfer speed of 30 MB/s.

A straightforward calculation indicates that it should take 117 minutes to complete the transfer. In practice, however, I am noticing a time to completion of about 250 minutes, or more than double the theoretical calculation.

Can anyone please explain this large discrepancy or, alternatively, suggest some way to improve on this performance? With Robocopy I use switches /mir /xo /mt:80.

All suggestions appreciated.