Write a btach file to copy files from one network folder to another network folder

Enjoy:

forfiles -p "C:\what\ever" -s -m *.* -d <number of days> -c "cmd /c del @path"

See forfiles documentation for more details.

For more goodies, refer to An A-Z Index of the Windows XP command line.

If you don't have forfiles installed on your machine, copy it from any Windows Server 2003 to your Windows XP machine at %WinDir%\system32\. This is possible since the EXE is fully compatible between Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.

Later versions of Windows and Windows Server have it installed by default.

For Windows 7 and newer (including Windows 10):

The syntax has changed a little. Therefore the updated command is:

forfiles /p "C:\what\ever" /s /m *.* /D -<number of days> /C "cmd /c del @path"

xcopy.exe is definitely your friend here. It's built into Windows, so its cost is nothing.

Just xcopy /s c:\source d:\target

You'd probably want to tweak a few things; some of the options we also add include these:

• /s/e - recursive copy, including copying empty directories.
• /v - add this to verify the copy against the original. slower, but for the paranoid.
• /h - copy system and hidden files.
• /k - copy read-only attributes along with files. otherwise, all files become read-write.
• /x - if you care about permissions, you might want /o or /x.
• /y - don't prompt before overwriting existing files.
• /z - if you think the copy might fail and you want to restart it, use this. It places a marker on each file as it copies, so you can rerun the xcopy command to pick up from where it left off.

If you think the xcopy might fail partway through (like when you are copying over a flaky network connection), or that you have to stop it and want to continue it later, you can use xcopy /s/z c:\source d:\target.

Hope this helps.