Is it possible with robocopy to move files from folder-B to folder-C if they also exist in folder-A? Can't change the contents of Folder-A. Folder-A - e:\restore_1 Folder-B - e:\restore_2 Folder-C - e:\duplicate_files

Hi, As far as I know, we can specify many options in the Robocopy command line tool to achieve our target. Regarding your request, I suggest we could refer to the following article to see if there are some examples of the command could help us to achieve the target. Robocopy and a Few Examples http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1073.robocopy-and-a-few-examples.aspx For more detailed information about Robocopy, please refer to the following articles. Robocopy http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145(v=ws.10).aspx Get to Know Robocopy for More Powerful File Management http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee851678.aspx Here is the article about Robocopy GUI tool, its easy to create Robocopy command for us with this tool. Utility Spotlight http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.04.utilityspotlight.aspx Regards, Andy

There are no options to robocopy that allow you to add a third location into the mix; comparisons are done between a source directory and a target directory. It IS possible to do something akin to what you ask using other tools; one straightforward way involves using PowerShell. What are your options other than Robocopy? Also, do you want to MOVE files B->C or did you mean COPY? If you CAN use PowerShell, for example, here's a quick example of how this would work when simply copying. $AFiles = Get-ChildItem -Recurse e:\restore_1 $BFiles = Get-ChildItem -Recurse e:\restore_2 Compare-Object $AFiles $BFiles | ?{$_.SideIndicator -eq "=>"} | %{Copy-Item $_.InputObject.FullName e:\duplicatefiles

Andy, I did check out robocopy and the links you referenced. Some real good info but no reference to using a 3rd folder for comparison. Alex - thanks. I will test. I have started looking at ps. What does SideIndicator do?

Alex - I need to learn more here. kept trying to do this, first with a foreach statement. That worked but took a very long time. Then I pulled this off another thread. $folderA='y:\sourcefolder\' $folderB='x:\somefolder\*' dir $folderB | %{move "$folderA$($_.Name)" $folderC -force} Can you help me understand what your compare-object line does? And, which folder would this copy from? Thank you, this is good. :)

When you run objects through Compare-Object, by default it returns objects which are unlike in the reference ($AFiles) and difference ($BFiles) sets. SideIndicator is an "arrow" pointing left ("<=") for items in the first or reference set only and right ("=>") in the second or difference set. By the way, my example will dump all the copied B-only files into e:\duplicatefiles directly, no subdirectories. If you need to maintain structure, there's another element to work on in the script.

Thanks Alex!