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LifeAsBob

  Thursday, March 28, 2024
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     XCOPY Commands
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Will be added as a sub-category of, DOS
XCOPY Commands
Syntax
      XCOPY source [destination] [options]
Key source : Pathname for the file(s) to be copied. destination : Pathname for the new file(s).

[options] can be any combination of the following:

Source Options
/A Copy files with the archive attribute set (default=Y)
/M Copy files with the archive attribute set and
turn off the archive attribute, use this option
when making regular Backups (default=Y)

/H Copy hidden and system files and folders (default=N)
/D:mm-dd-yyyy
Copy files that have changed since mm-dd-yyyy. If no date is given, the default is to copy
files with a modification date before today. (at least 1 day before)
/U Copy only files that already exist in destination.
/S Copy folders and subfolders
/E Copy folders and subfolders, including Empty folders.
May be used to modify /T. /EXCLUDE:file1[+file2][+file3]... (Windows 2000 only) The files can each contain one or more full or partial pathnames to be excluded. When any of these match any part of the absolute path of a SOURCE file, then that file will be excluded. For example, specifying a string like \obj\ or .obj will exclude all files underneath the directory obj or all files with the .obj extension respectively.

Copy Options

/W Prompt you to press a key before starting to copy.
/P Prompt before creating each file. /Y (Windows 2000 only) Suppress prompt to confirm overwriting a file. may be preset in the COPYCMD env variable. /-Y (Windows 2000 only) Prompt to confirm overwriting a file.

/V
Verify that the new files were written correctly. /C Continue copying even if an error occurs.
/I If in doubt always assume the destination is a folder
e.g. when the destination does not exist.

/Z Copy files in restartable mode. If the copy is interrupted part
way through, it will restart if possible. (use on slow networks)
/Q Do not display file names while copying. /F Display full source and destination file names while copying. /L List only - Display files that would be copied.
Destination Options
/R Overwrite read-only files.
/T Create folder structure, but do not copy files. Do not include empty folders or subfolders.
/T /E will include empty folders and subfolders.
/K Copy attributes. XCOPY will otherwise reset read-only attributes.

/N If at all possible, use only a short filename (8.3) when creating a destination file. This may be nececcary when copying between disks that are formatted differently e.g NTFS and VFAT, or when archiving data to an ISO9660 CDROM. /O (Windows 2000 only) copy file Ownership and ACL information. /X Copy file audit settings (implies /O).

XCOPY will accept UNC pathnames

Examples:

To copy a directory tree with no files, includes sub-folders, even empty ones

XCOPY u:\SourceDir\*.* u:\TargetDir /s /i /T /E

To copy a file:

XCOPY C:\utils\MyFile D:\Backup\CopyFile

To copy a folder:

XCOPY C:\utils D:\Backup\utils /i

To copy a folder including all subfolders.

XCOPY C:\utils\* D:\Backup\utils /s /i

The /i defines the destination as a folder.

 

Exclude files:

XCOPY C:\DATA\*.* C:\BKUP /S /I /Y /EXCLUDE:c:\excludelist.txt

the /S flag = copies all directories and subdirectories except empty ones (use the /E instead if you want empty folders also copied)

the /I flag = If the destination does not exist and we are copying more than one file, it will assume the destination is a folder

the /Y flag = Suppresses all prompts to overwrite destination file if it already exists

the /EXCLUDE flag = this will point to a file that has the excluded file types or folder or file names. in my example, i created a text file called: excludelist.txt in the root of my C: drive.

in that excludelist.txt, i then added the word SECRET on the first line. If you have more than one excluded item; be sure to put each on a new line.

The main thing to remember when using the /EXCLUDE flag is that you have to put the location of the excluded file list after the flag; not the actual excluded items/terms. That initially was the most confusing part. You can create multiple excluded file lists; you would need to use the + list (ie XCOPY c:\* v:\ /EXCLUDE:c:\excluded1.txt+c:\excluded2.txt )