Free Windows Command Line Sync Tool

February 10th, 2009 Category: General

For Windows there is a cute little tool from Microsoft available which can be used to synchronize folders. It is part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Tool Kit and called “Robocopy”. It is a command line tool which supports UNC path names. So it’s a useful tool to sync folders e.g. to a network storage (NAS).

A simple call to sync a folder to a second local hard disc looks like:
robocopy c:\temp\Privat "e:\backup" /MIR

/MIR mirror a directory tree

If you want to sync to a NAS storage which is not based on a Microsoft Operating System you need to add some further flags:
robocopy c:\temp\Privat "\\ts-101\USB Disk 1\Test" /MIR /Z /A /M
/Z copy files in restartable mode (useful when sync e.g. over DSL connection which may sometimes terminate)

/M copy only files with the Archive attribute set and reset it (needed if you want to sync to a NAS storage which is not based on Microsoft)

/A copy only files with the Archive attribute set (needed if you want to sync to a NAS storage which is not based on Microsoft)