question about robocopy behavior...  

I was trying to do a quick backup of my documents folder, so decided to use robocopy with the /MIR switch:

robocopy C:\Users\Brian\Documents D:\Backups\X390\Current\Documents /MIR

It was taking a really long time, and what I discovered is that robocopy also backed up my pictures and video folders, as "My Pictures" and "My Videos" as subfolders of "Documents."

Since the pictures folder (and all others) are separate folders at C:\Users\Brian\Pictures, etc., why is robocopy seeing them as subfolders of "Documents?"

I played around with it a little bit, but didn't come up with a way to only get "Documents"--is there a way to do this?

RolandJS said:

My wild guess is this is a Library and/or Junction[s] situation; I will listen in and learn alongside you from the wisdom of others.

I thought the same about libraries, but they all appear to be separate (documents, music, pictures, videos--I left "My Music" out of my previous post). But, yes, it is like all the libraries are included, but as subfolders of Documents makes no sense.

Bree said:

@RolandJS is absolutely correct. 'My Music', 'My Pictures' and 'My Videos' are junctions, and RoboCopy will copy them as if they are folders.

The way to tell RoboCopy to ignore junctions is to add the /XJD switch to your command line. Type RoboCopy /? for more details.

Well, bingo! I've been using Windows basically since it began, and never heard of "Junctions." I Googled it, and still don't really get it, or why it is there, but I was able to reproduce your screen shot of the command prompt showing those folders as Junctions. I added the /XJD switch after /MIR, and sure enough, just a very quick update of my Documents folder backup.

Thank you!