Windows 7 Robocopy – Multithreaded File Copy

By Aun on Oct 27 2009 5 Comments

The Robocopy (Robust File Copy For Windows) is an old feature in Windows, for those not familiar with it, it is a powerful file copy method from the command line interface. Windows 7 also includes this feature but with some major enhancements, multithread support.

The general syntax for Robocopy is as follows:

ROBOCOPY <Directory that will be copied> <New Directory>

For the multithreaded copy, only add the /MT switch at the end of the above command and then specify the threads as an integer value, which you wish to start for this copy process, i.e

“ROBOCOPY <Directory that will be copied> <New Directory> /MT:<Integer number of threads to use>”

You can use a maximum of 120 threads. For further help, you can open the command line and type robocopy, it will display its help.

RoboCopy

I copied a directory with the name AddictiveTips from D drive to C with 5 threads by running the following command( Please note that when I ran this command I was already present in the D drive, otherwise I would have had to explicitly define the source directory).

ROBOCOPY  AddictiveTips C: /MT 5

RobboyCopy

It’s that simple. Also check out RichCopy, it is a Graphical User Interface(GUI) of Robocopy. Enjoy!

  • http://www.facebook.com/XilverGt2 Marco Antonio Tapia Nuñez

    is great thanks for the info…..

  • http://www.facebook.com/XilverGt2 Marco Antonio Tapia Nuñez

    is great thanks for the info…..

  • http://www.facebook.com/XilverGt2 Marco Antonio Tapia Nuñez

    is great thanks for the info…..

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  • xzy

    What would be really helpful is an option to achieve a traditional full-backup. ie. In a traditional full-backup you copy the files and clear the source archive attribute. /M only copies files with the attribute set so can’t be used for a full-backup. /A-:A only resets Archive in the destination (and here’s a fun one for you, run robocopy twice with this option and watch all your archive attributes get turned back on for all the skipped files). The oft cited attrib command is not a good solution to the full-backup problem until we can have it look at the same files as robocopy (read the same filter options etc).

  • Thomas Encole

    It is a nice software with brilliant options but it dont work for long path files, for long path files the most efficient tool is available at http://www.longpathtool.com it is quick,smart and easy to use tool by which you can deal with all long path files most efficiently.