Using Robocopy to Copy Files and Folders While Maintaining ACLs

Robocopy is a Windows Server Resource Kit command line tool that allow you to copy files and folders while maintaining ACLs. In addition it allows you to copy files across networks with fault tolerance capabilities – if the network connection is disrupted, the copy operation will continue where it left off when the connection is restored. Robocopy will also allow you to synchronize local or remote directories and if changes are detected, only the changed bits in a file are copied as opposed to the entire file being copied.

How to use Robocopy to copy the contents of one directory to another while maintaining ACLs:

  • NOTE: Do not put a trailing backslash at the end of the directory paths. The destination directory does not have to currently exist.
robocopy c:\pathToSourceDirectory c:\pathToDestinationDirectory /E /SEC

Here is a link to a Microsoft article that talks about the GUI version of Robocopy: Link

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