This means that subsequent copies of the changed files take just as long as the initial copy.īy appending /FFT to the long list of switches used in your robocopy command, it allows for a discrepancy of up to 2 seconds – enough to provide a convenient workaround to this problem. When migrating data into a Celerra/VNX/NetApp CIFS Server, the act of copying data from a NTFS volume on a Windows Server to a Linux based Filesystem on a NAS is enough to throw the timestamps on the files out just enough to make robocopy think that the source file is newer, even when it’s not. Note: Use /TIMFIX with /B to correct non-copying of datestamps on files, resulting in datestamps on all files copied with /B Backup rights.

Uh, and come to think of it, the /XO switch too (especially if you’re running a repeated backup of data to a USB HDD). Update: AND THE /B SWITCH (use backup rights).

The switch worth mentioning the most though, is the /FFT switch. Robocopy on the other hand, does allow exclusion of more than one directory, each one specified using the /xd switch and can be a full path (to exclude very specific directories) or just one word (to exclude any directories with that name anywhere in the directory tree). This has mainly come about having discovered an annoying bug in emcopy whereby it doesn’t ignore the directories specified by more than one /xd exclusion – it always excludes the last one specified, but none of the others?! I thought it only fair to follow up with an equivalent post for good ol’ robocopy. As a compliment to my recent post “Data Migration using emcopy”

Emcopy samples