XCOPY – The forgotten DOS Command

   Since the advent of the GUI – Graphical User Interface – DOS commands have pretty much been forgotten, and rightly so. Why type in or create DOS batch files when someone else has put all these cryptic commands together for you into a nice graphical program where all you have to do is click the “Backup” button. Well, there are two reasons: cost and control. Most graphical programs execute the same DOS command that you could type in at the command line yourself and perform the same exact function. You can also control the various aspects of the copy command via DOS command switches. I’ll explain that in a minute. It’s all a matter of convenience. The GUI makes us lazy, but we have to pay for that laziness. Someone else does all the work and you just click a button. And I don’t have a problem with that if that’s what you decide you want to do. My goal here is just to let you know that you do have a choice. With minimal work you can create your own DOS equivalent

of those fancy GUI programs and save money. Plus give yourself a feeling of accomplishment.

    Let’s start with the DOS command XCOPY, because everyone wants a backup of their data. We are going to create a DOS command that backs up a folder and its subfolders to a destination of your choosing for safe keeping. First, let’s get a DOS command box up on the screen. Start – Run – Cmd

This is our DOS command box where we can issue commands that emulate the expensive programs. The command we will be using is xcopy. Now xcopy provides various control switches that dictate just how the program will perform. Whether it will copy only new files, or all files. Things like that. So if you type in:    xcopy  /?  At the command line you see all the various switches available to us.

As you can see there are a lot. But that’s good because that helps us control exactly how the command will act during its copy operation.

The format of the command will be:     XCOPY [source] [destination] [/switches]

We can use as many switches in the command as we need.

Here’s a sample command we can use to analyze and also as a quick reference for the future, just in case you find yourself wanting to make a quick backup.

xcopy     C:\Source_Folder     E:\Destination_Folder     /D /E /C /R /H /I /K /Y

copy contents of  C:\source folder and subdirectories to  E:\destination folder and recreate subdirectories

/D Switch = Copies files changed on or after a specified date. If no date is given, copies only those files whose source time

is newer than the destination time.

/E Switch = Copies directories and sub-directories., including empty ones.

/C Switch = Continues copying even if errors occurs.

/R Switch = Over writes read only files.

/H Switch = Copies system and hidden files as well.

/I   Switch = If destination does not exist and copying more than one file, assume that destination must be a directory.

/K Switch = Copies attributes. Normal xcopy will reset read-only attributes.

/Y Switch = Suppress prompting to confirm you want to overwrite destination files.

This command will copy all the files, including those in sub-folders, that are newer in the source folder when compared to the destination folder. Try it with some non-critical folders first to verify that you have the process down.

   Once you’ve tried this command and you are satisfied it works. You would then create a batch file ( text file with an extension of .bat ) and copy that command into the file and schedule it to run daily via the Windows scheduler. That’s it! You just saved yourself $40.00 on a backup program.

Now keep in mind that you can also create additional batch files to automatically cleanup the temp files, defrag your drives, and even reboot your PC. There are endless possibilities with the command line. You could save your batch files to a USB memory stick and take them with you to your friend's house or your PC at work. All free.

Resources:  technet