These days I find myself downloading really big files frequently – often on
slow and latent networks. There are a few tools out there – namely robocopy –
to aid in this task. After googling for the correct robocopy command line
syntax 3 times in the last 2 weeks, I decided it’s time for a cheatsheet blog
post.
robocopy.exe
If you don’t have the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools installed, then you
don’t have ROBOCOPY installed. Download and install first
command line syntax (with restarts)
"C:\Program
Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\robocopy.exe" "\\<server>\<share>\\" "<localdir>\\" “filename"
"filename" "filename" /LOG+:C:\robocopy.log /Z /V
The above syntax will give you a resilient download that can handle network
latency. Don’t forget the double backslash around the Source and Destination.
robocopy will escape the strings and not behave how you’d like without them.