Using XCOPY to copy contents of folders - /E

When creating a batch file to copy the entire contents of a folder to a new location with the Windows command XCOPY, add in the operator /E at the end of the script.

This script will copy all of the subfolders, and their contents, at the first listed path, to the second path.

dir command to get a list of only folder paths

If you have a directory in Windows with a lot of subfolders, and you need to get a list of just the folders and not any files which they may contain, you can use this dir command in command prompt:

dir /s /b /o:n /ad > list.txt

As always, you can put this little script in a text file, change the extension to .bat and double-click to activate it. It will output a text file with the list of folders.

COMP to compare files

You can use the Windows command COMP to compare two different files.

Entering the command COMP followed by the paths of two different files:

COMP c:\foofolder\file1.txt c:\foofolder\file2.txt /D

. . . will let you know if the files are identical in size.