Difference between xcopy and robocopy

Question

I m kind of new to batch scripting  As a newbie I find both both of them useful while scripting What are the key differences between xcopy and robocopy

User · Answer

I have written lot of scripts to automate daily backups etc. Previously I used XCopy and then moved to Robocopy. Anyways Robocopy and XCopy both are frequently used in terms of file transfers in Windows. Robocopy stands for Robust File Copy. All type of huge file copying both these commands are used but Robocopy has added options which makes copying easier as well as for debugging purposes.

Having said that lets talk about features between these two.

Robocopy becomes handy for mirroring or synchronizing directories. It also checks the files in the destination directory against the files to be copied and doesn't waste time copying unchanged files.
Just like myself, if you are into automation to take daily backups etc, "Run Hours - /RH" becomes very useful without any interactions. This is supported by Robocopy. It allows you to set when copies should be done rather than the time of the command as with XCopy. You will see robocopy.exe process in task list since it will run background to monitor clock to execute when time is right to copy.
Robocopy supports file and directory monitoring with the "/MON" or "/MOT" commands.
Robocopy gives extra support for copying over the "archive" attribute on files, it supports copying over all attributes including timestamps, security, owner, and auditing information.

Hope this helps you.

User · Answer

The differences I could see is that Robocopy has a lot more options  but I didn t find any of them particularly helpful unless I m doing something special     I did some benchmarking of several copy routines and found XCOPY and ROBOCOPY to be the fastest  but to my surprise  XCOPY consistently edged out Robocopy   It s ironic that robocopy retries a copy that fails  but it also failed a lot in my benchmark tests  where xcopy never did     I did full file  byte by byte  file compares after my benchmark tests     Here are the switches I used with robocopy in my tests         E  R 1  W 1  NP  NFL  NDL         If anyone knows a faster combination  other than removing  E  which I need   I d love to hear     Another interesting disappointing thing with robocopy is that if a copy does fail  by default it retries 1 000 000 times with a 30 second delay between each try   If you are running a long batch file unattended  you may be very disappointed when you come back after a few hours to find it s still trying to copy a particular file     The  R and  W switches let you change this behavior      With  R you can tell it how many times to retry    W let s you specify the wait time before retries      If there s a way to attach files here  I can share my results      My tests were all done on the same computer and  copied files from one external drive to another external   both on USB 3 0 ports      I also included FastCopy and Windows Copy in my tests and each test was run 10 times   Note  the differences were pretty significant   The 95  confidence intervals had no overlap

User · Answer

The most important difference is that robocopy will  usually  retry when an error occurs  while xcopy will not   In most cases  that makes robocopy far more suitable for use in a script   Addendum  for completeness  there is one known edge case issue with robocopy  it may silently fail to copy files or directories whose names contain invalid UTF-16 sequences   If that s a problem for you  you may need to look at third-party tools  or write your own

User · Answer

Its painful to hear people are still suffering at the hands of    COPY  whatever the version  I am a seasoned batch and Bash script writer and I recommend rsync   you can run this within cygwin  cygwin org  or you can locate some binaries floating around   and you can redirect output to 2  amp 1 to some log file like out log for later analysing  Good luck people its time to love life again    M  Kaan

User · Answer

Robocopy replaces XCopy in the newer versions of windows   Uses Mirroring  XCopy does not Has a  RH option to allow a set time for the copy to run Has a  MON n option to check differences in files Copies over more file attributes than XCopy   Yes i agree with Mark Setchell  They are both crap   brought to you by Microsoft     UPDATE   XCopy return codes   0 - Files were copied without error  1 - No files were found to copy  2 - The user pressed CTRL C to terminate xcopy  enough memory or disk space  or you entered an invalid drive name or invalid syntax on the command line  5 - Disk write error occurred    Robocopy returns codes   0 - No errors occurred  and no copying was done  The source and destination directory trees are completely synchronized  1 - One or more files were copied successfully  that is  new files have arrived   2 - Some Extra files or directories were detected  No files were copied Examine the output log for details   3 -  2 1  Some files were copied  Additional files were present  No failure was encountered  4 - Some Mismatched files or directories were detected  Examine the output log  Some housekeeping may be needed  5 -  4 1  Some files were copied  Some files were mismatched  No failure was encountered  6 -  4 2  Additional files and mismatched files exist  No files were copied and no failures were encountered  This means that the files already exist in the destination directory 7 -  4 1 2  Files were copied  a file mismatch was present  and additional files were present  8 - Some files or directories could not be copied  copy errors occurred and the retry limit was exceeded   Check these errors further  16 - Serious error  Robocopy did not copy any files  Either a usage error or an error due to insufficient access privileges on the source or destination directories    There is more details on Robocopy return values here  http   ss64 com nt robocopy-exit html

User · Answer

They are both rubbish  XCOPY was older and unreliable  so Microsoft replaced it with ROBOCOPY  which is still rubbish   http   answers microsoft com en-us windows forum windows 8-files robocopy-appears-to-be-broken-in-windows-8 9a7634c4-3a9d-4f2d-97ae-093002a638a9  Don t worry though  it is a long-standing tradition that was started by the original COPY command  which to this day  still needs the  B switch to get it to actually copy properly

[windows] Difference between xcopy and robocopy

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