Alternatives to XCopy for copying lots of files?

Question

The situation: I have a pieceofcrapuous laptop. One of the things that make it pieceofcrapuous is that the battery is dead, and the power cable pulls out of the back with little effort.

I recently received a non-pieceofcrapuous laptop, and I am in the process of copying everything from old to new. I'm trying to xcopy c:*.* from the old machine to an external hard drive, but because the cord pulls out so frequently, the xcopy is interrupted fairly often.

What I need is a switch in XCopy that will copy eveything except for files that already exist in the destination folder -- the exact opposite of the behavior of the /U switch.

Does anyone know of a way to do this?

Answer 1

Perhaps try robocopy.

Answer 2

I find RoboCopy is a good alternative to xcopy. It supports high latency connections much better and supports resuming a copy.

References

Wikipedia - robocopy

Downloads

Edit Robocopy was introduced as a standard feature of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

• Robocopy is shipped as part of the Windows Server 2003 resource kit and can be download from the Microsoft download site.

• A very simple GUI has also been release for RoboCopy on technet http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc160891.aspx

Answer 3

I would suggest using rsync, several ports are available, but cwrsync seems to work nicely on Windows.

Answer 4

I'm a big fan of TeraCopy.

Answer 5

How about unison?

Answer 6

/D may be what you are looking for. I find it works quite fast for backing-up as existing files are not copied.

xcopy "O:\*.*" N:\Whatever /C /D /S /H 

/C Continues copying even if errors occur. 
/D:m-d-y Copies files changed on or after the specified date. 
    If no date is given, copies only those files whose source time 
    is newer than the destination time. 
/S Copies directories and subdirectories except empty ones. 
/H Copies hidden and system files also.

More information: http://www.computerhope.com/xcopyhlp.htm

Answer 7

It was not clear if you only wanted a command line tool, but Microsoft's free SyncToy program is great for maintaining a replication between a pair of volumes. It supports pushing changes in either or both directions. That is, it support several different types of replication modes.

Answer 8

Beyond Compare 3 is the best utility I've seen for things like this. It makes everything really easy to assess, and really easy to manipulate.