Windows – How to copy one directory to another with window command prompt

I know this question is old, but I think there is a new answer that might be helpful since this question has not been answered with any upvotes, and I've never gotten a good answer to similar questions.

I just found FastCopy for Windows available free under GPLv3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastCopy

FastCopy is still maintained by Shirouzu Hiroaki (@shirouzu) and was last updated on August 8, 2018 (as of this answer). It supports:

• copying path names well over the 260 character limit
• avoiding OS cache (by default) to improve speed
• can copy ACL with Extended Attributes and alternate streams
• will optionally copy HardLinks, Junctions, and SymLinks
• copy verify via various hashes
• differential copying based on size/date, etc.

The download is linked from his website (with source code available) here.

It is an EXE installer (ugh) but during install allows a portable "Extract Only" installation to the directory of your choice.

I was amazed by the speed today and it will save me hours on a repeated copy task that I have implemented. I have tried other frequently referenced alternatives like Robocopy, TeraCopy, xxcopy, Ultracopier, Copy Handler, etc., but I've never seen anything perform like this.

robocopy is advertised as the replacement for xcopy but if it's unable to do something simple as what I want then it's truly a terrible replacement.

Any directory name after /xd that matches is excluded. This makes sense and it functions as advertised. Looks like any time you give it anything more than just a directory name then it wets the bed. My problem is surely not so unique looking at some of the other people on the internet and their troubles with robocopy.

I have the following directories:

C:\repo\SomeProject\Data             <- DONT exclude this
C:\repo\SomeOtherProject\Data        <- DONT exclude this
C:\repo\AnotherProject\bar           <- DONT exclude this
C:\repo\Data\foo                     <- Exclude this
C:\repo\Data\bar                     <- Exclude this
C:\repo\Data\baz                     <- DONT exclude this

• If I call robocopy with /xd Data then C:\repo\SomeProject\Data and C:\repo\SomeOtherProject\Data will also be excluded
• If I call robocopy with /xd foo bar then C:\repo\AnotherProject\bar will also be excluded.

I want to be able to call robocopy with /xd Data\foo Data\bar so that only foo and bar in Data will be excluded.

Absolute file paths will not work because the code must be portable and I don't really want to inject absolute paths for each entry in my >100 excludes list. It just doesn't seem right.

What appears to happen is if I use /xd Data\bar then robocopy interprets it as Data\\bar which it cannot find. I do not know why a single \ is changed to \\ and any permutation of \ or / does not work either.

The solution

So ultimately the answer to my question is to use xcopy. I give it a list containing entries such as *.cpp, 8.vcxproj, \Data\foo\, \Data\bar\ and a 100 other entries and it seems to work just fine excluding all the stuff I don't want while keeping the stuff I need.