Robocopy /IM
Posted: 2022-Mar-30, 10:37 am
I updated the robocopy page yesterday to add the /IM and /COMPRESS options
/IM (include modified) has the help text "include modified files (differing change times)"
which doesn't make sense as copying files with a different last modified time or file size is the default action of Robocopy without any switches.
So I did some testing and it seems you have to change the Archive attribute on both the source and destination and then /IM will copy the file even if nothing else has changed.
It doesn't seem to matter if the archive attribute is set or unset, or even set and then immediately unset again, but both source and destination need to be changed and both need to be set to the same value and then /IM will see the files as having changed enough to trigger a fresh copy.
This doesn't seem very useful, but perhaps there is some other nuance which I'm missing?
/IM (include modified) has the help text "include modified files (differing change times)"
which doesn't make sense as copying files with a different last modified time or file size is the default action of Robocopy without any switches.
So I did some testing and it seems you have to change the Archive attribute on both the source and destination and then /IM will copy the file even if nothing else has changed.
It doesn't seem to matter if the archive attribute is set or unset, or even set and then immediately unset again, but both source and destination need to be changed and both need to be set to the same value and then /IM will see the files as having changed enough to trigger a fresh copy.
This doesn't seem very useful, but perhaps there is some other nuance which I'm missing?