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From what I've found online, robocopy seems to be xcopy with more features; are there any scenarios where someone would want to use xcopy over robocopy?

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    I dont know anything about robocopy but xcopy was included as part of the OS going back an extremely long time - so there are probably a number if scripts that expect it.
    – davidgo
    Commented Feb 23, 2022 at 23:46
  • @davidgo are you saying that some (older?) scripts might not be using xcopy because they were written a long time ago
    – Meester Moo
    Commented Feb 23, 2022 at 23:51
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    no, he means the opposite. xcopy has been in use for at least 35 years, included in every MS OS ever released (goes back to DOS 3.2 in 1986), whereas robocopy has only been included in the OS by default since 2006 or so (vista/server 2k8). if I was in a dos environment, or in windows 9x/nt/me/2k/xp I'd use xcopy.
    – Frank Thomas
    Commented Feb 24, 2022 at 0:02
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    robocopy is more versatile, especially with ACLs (allows exactly mirroring a directory's/file's ACLs upon copying via /sec, even if the user doesn't have access privs to the files), exclusions, and monitoring (it can monitor a file/directory for changes and copy/move files/directories based upon an arbitrary change), as well as saving command parameters as a RoboCopy job [.rcj] for calling upon next time. Simply put, it's better than xcopy in almost every way.
    – JW0914
    Commented Feb 24, 2022 at 0:14
  • I've always thought that robocopy was a response to rsync more than anything else. windows admins needed a tool with advanced features to make up for missing features in the command shell that were common in contemporary linux shells, and was reliable over the network. xcopy can only work over the network if drives have been previously mapped.
    – Frank Thomas
    Commented Feb 24, 2022 at 0:18

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