Windows 10: Robocopy infinite recursion

Hi,

I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 2 weeks ago.

I have been using Robocopy for years to backup my system. However, since I upgraded, Robocopy goes into a seemingly infinite loop, when backing up via the Documents and Settings Junction.

I have not changed the permissions on this folder, nor on the C:Users\[user]\AppData\Local\Application Data folder which is also involved.

If I show Operating System folders and try to open these folders, I get "Access Denied", as I would expect.


If I use the /XJ option in Robocopy, I will not be able to back up via junctions that I have set up to access data on a separate data drive.


What's the problem?


Thanks

:)

 

Anyone familair with robocopy?

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.

 

Anyone familair with robocopy?

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

 

Source Path Too Long bug in Windows 10

I totally agree: In other threads, this problem has come up because robocopy follows junctions and links, and MS, in their infinite wisdom, chose to create (or perpetuate from windowss 7 & 8) a link in User AppData\Local named 'Application Data' (which,
BTW, ordinary users cannot remove) which points to the parent directory it is in (..\..\AppData). Robocopy, by default, follows junctions and symbolic links, which leads to a disk sucking infinite recursive creation of nested 'AppData; folders.

Sad! Fail!

The best cure to not have this happen would be to set default robocopy options:

• /XJ XJ excludes all junction points (which is what the Application Data link is)
• /256 exclude > 256 character file path support. This will prevent the copy from happening in the first place.