Robocopy move files after it is fully downloaded

Robocopy is one of the most-used command-line utilities to copy large volumes of data in Windows. But with all that power comes complexity.

In this guide, we will break down all that complexity and provide a complete tutorial on using this useful tool. The version of Robocopy as of this writing is up to This is the version I performed my testing on. Robocopy provides a slew of features you can leverage to perform efficient and fast file copies and moves. It can:. I wanted to cover everything you need to know about this handy tool.

Why such a long blog post on a single utility? Just feast your eyes on the tables below. You have a lot of options to copy or move files with robocopy! You will more options in the individual sections. I could provide you an enormously long list of robocopy commands with an ever-growing number of switches. Every robocopy execution will have a source and a destination directory.

Robocopy copies and moves files by entire directory. To robocopy a single file file, specify the source and destination directories immediately followed by the file name in the source. Also, the options you provide to robocopy will depend on the environment. Explicitly define your current and potential future circumstances your environment will be in. Robocopy uses a lot of options by default.

You can pick them out by looking at the tables above. It also provides a handy output to every time you run the utility. You can see below that when I ran robocopy with its most basic options the source and destination folder , it automatically used some options.

Understanding the default behavior is important. These robocopy commands have a default behavior. But robocopy, on the other hand, understands a lot more and gives you the flexibility to tweak the behavior as much as you want. There are many different attributes and things that go with the concept of a file. For example, a file has attributes such as:. When you copy or move a file, you have the option to bring all of that stuff along with it, if you want. This is a great way to return all of the options robocopy would have used default or not.

It will give you an overall view of what robocopy will do given the options you provided it. You can also copy everything including subfolders empty or not and NTFS permissions.

This is, from what I can tell, the method to literally copy everything there is about a directory of files to another directory. Moving files transfers files from one directory to another just like copying does. The only difference with a move operation is that the source files are removed after the copy. This will remove all files in the specified directory no subfolders.

Robocopy allows you to sync two directories. This means either ensuring all files in the destination directory are in the source directory and no more. This means that if a file begins copying and fails midway, the copy can start again instead of failing completely.

Let me know your findings. This switch has been known to more accurately preserve file timestamps when transferring over a network. This is also known as the inter-packet gap option. This option defines in milliseconds the frequency in which robocopy will wait between sending new packets. A reader on Reddit discovered the hard way to not use mapped drives as a destination directory. Instead, always use always use a UNC path. You might run into issues with the character limit if you do.

Check out this Microsoft doc for more information. The copied files will not be readable and will generate errors when trying to manipulate them. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported. Download Microsoft Edge More info.

Contents Exit focus mode. Is this page helpful? Please rate your experience Yes No. Any additional feedback? Note Any value greater than 8 indicates that there was at least one failure during the copy operation. Submit and view feedback for This product This page. View all page feedback. In this article. Specifies the file or files to be copied. Specifies the options to use with the robocopy command, including copy , file , retry , logging , and job options. Copies files in restartable mode.

In restartable mode, should a file copy be interrupted, Robocopy can pick up where it left off rather than re-copying the entire file. Copies files in backup mode. Backup mode allows Robocopy to override file and folder permission settings ACLs. This allows you to copy files you might otherwise not have access to, assuming it's being run under an account with sufficient privileges. Copies only the top N levels of the source directory tree. Uses Restart mode. If access is denied, this option uses Backup mode.

Specifies the file properties to be copied. Fixes file security on all files, even skipped ones. Deletes destination files and directories that no longer exist in the source. Moves files, and deletes them from the source after they are copied.

Moves files and directories, and deletes them from the source after they are copied. Removes the specified attributes from copied files. Creates a directory tree and zero-length files only.

Creates destination files by using 8. Turns off support for very long paths longer than characters. Monitors the source, and runs again when more than N changes are detected. Monitors source, and runs again in M minutes if changes are detected.

Specifies run times when new copies may be started. Checks run times on a per-file not per-pass basis. Specifies the inter-packet gap to free bandwidth on slow lines.

Copies only files for which the Archive attribute is set. Copies only files for which the Archive attribute is set, and resets the Archive attribute. Includes only files for which any of the specified attributes are set. Excludes files for which any of the specified attributes are set. Excludes directories that match the specified names and paths. Excludes extra files and directories. Extra files are files that exist in the destination directory. Excludes "lonely" files and directories.

Specifies the maximum file size to exclude files bigger than N bytes. Specifies the minimum file size to exclude files smaller than N bytes. Specifies the maximum file age to exclude files older than N days or date.