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Aug 11

Multithreaded File Copies with Robocopy in Windows 7

Categories:

Useful Tools, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista

by TommyNator84

Robocopy is included in Windows 7 and features a new multi-threaded copy option. To perform a multi-threaded copy, you use the new /MT[:n] switch, where n indicates the number of threads to be used. By default, n is 8 when you use the /MT option, and can be any value from 1 to 128.
Note that the multi-threaded option is not compatible with the /IPG and /EFSRAW options.

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  • Tommy

    Nice!

    I have ran several huge file transfer jobs (millions of files of all sizes) across a 10Mbit WAN in my corporate network, and with the MT option set to 8 threads it seemed to go a lot faster than expected, but of course I could not measure this. All I did was try the manual “copy files” via Windows Explorer and noted that it would take approximately 1 day, then aborted. With Robocopy and /MT it took about 3 hours give or take.

  • Dennis

    We ran some tests comparing Robocopy with and without the /MT (multithread) option with local disk, 1GbE network and 10GbE network. We tested a variety of numbers and sizes of files. I gave a presentation at our local user group meeting, and the presentation is available at http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_March_2011-03.html. The /MT option provides improved performance and in some cases, significantly improved performance.

  • http://www.demartek.com demartek

    Thanks. Is there any way to edit out the trailing “.” in the hyperlink?