How to Robocopy All Files and Folders from One Drive to Another?

Help, the Robocopy command doesn’t work!

Recently, I found my C drive was almost full and so I needed to free up some space. I thought of Robocopy and tried to use the command lines to move some apps from the C drive to the D drive. However, when I tried moving Firefox from Program Files to the D drive with the command lines, I was prompted that the parameter was invalid.

Why Robocopy all files and folders to another drive?

Robocopy, short for “Robust File Copy”, is a command-line directory and file replication command for Microsoft Windows. Robocopy functionally replaces Xcopy with more options and features. With Robocopy, users can not only move files including apps and programs within one drive but also, they can transfer those files between 2 drives like C and D.

Over time, the C drive, which is also called the system drive, will run out of storage. When this happens, your computer’s performance will be affected very much. For example, when the C drive is low on space, the system speed can become dramatically slow and glitches like frequent crashes may also occur. In this case, Robocopy is a good choice to free up some C drive space by moving some software and apps to another drive like D, E, and F from it.

How to use Robocopy to move files between 2 drives?

As we see above, C drive full can cause many problems and we should use tools like Robocopy to free up some space by transferring some files to another location. Here, I’ll introduce 2 set of command lines of Robocopy to help transfer files between drives. Below, I’ll move Firefox for example.

Option 1.

If you’re moving all NTFS ACLs, file owners, subfolders and all file attributes, you should add “/E” to include all empty subfolders and “/COPYALL” to catch the rest. Here is the example for Robocopy to copy all files and folders of Firefox from C to D.

robocopy C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox D:\sample /E /COPYALL

Option 2.

Moving files transfers files from one location to another similar to copying. The only difference with this operation is that the source file will be deleted after the copy. Follow the command lines below to get it done.

Robocopy C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox D:\sample /MOVE

An alternative to Robocopy for file transfer

Robocopy is a convenient inbuilt utility of Windows series with many useful features to help copy files. This is great. However, many novices respond Robocopy is too complicated and it’s hard to find an explicit tutorial on the internet. Moreover, some people claim that when they try copying files to another drive in the 2 methods mentioned above, they’re prompted with the notification that the parameter is invalid. So, what now?

Luckily, in this case, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional may help you out. With this most powerful disk management software, you can move apps and software including OneDrive, Microsoft Office, and games from your C drive to other drives within only a few clicks. Unlike the simple copy-paste method, with this software, there won’t be any boot file loss in the course of the transfer and after the process, you can normally run those files. Besides the feature of app mover, you can also solve the problem of C drive full by allocating free space, merging partitions or deleting large files on it.

What is the best alternative to Robocopy command to copy all files and folders from one drive to another? Download the demo of the most impressive disk management tool to have a try!

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional and you’ll see all disks and partitions appear on the main interface.

Step 2. Right-click the drive you need to move the applications and choose "APP Mover".

Step 3. Select the C drive as the source drive and hit “Next”.

Step 4. Tick the apps and programs you want to move, preset the destination for them, and hit “Move”.

Step 5. Hit “OK” to confirm the prompt and the transfer will begin.

Step 6. After completing, hit “Finish”.

Now, go to the destination drive and check whether all those moved apps and programs can be normally booted.

Conclusion

Robocopy is a good utility for professional users. However, for novices, it may not be a good choice. Meanwhile, there can be an error reported when you try to Robocopy all files and folders with the command lines. So, in the post above, I introduced another more powerful and easier alternative to Robocopy – AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional- to help move files from C drive other drives. To use this software on a Server computer, you should try the Server edition.