Why i can't launch Robocopy with Process.Start

Question

I want to run a Robocopy command from my code but it dosn't want to run.

Here's my code:

ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("CMD.EXE");
startInfo.Arguments = string.Format("/C ROBOCOPY {0} {1} /E /MT:32", srcPath, dstPath);
Process.Start(startInfo);

I tried this:

Process.Start("CMD.EXE", string.Format("/C ROBOCOPY {0} {1} /E /MT:32", srcPath, dstPath));

But it also dosn't work.

I don't know why it only run the cmd with no arguments but when i copy/paste my command on the cmd it work.

I have seen other topic talk about this but i none of them i found a fine answer.

Answer 1

The application is robocopy.exe not cmd . Instead of launching robocopy, you're launching a console and tell it to launch robocopy with injected arguments. It's VERY easy to create an invalid argument string this way, especially if the file names contain spaces.

Use robocopy.exe as the executable and pass only the robocopy arguments to the Arguments property. You have to ensure the path arguments are quoted, to take care of paths with spaces, eg:

ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("robocopy");
startInfo.Arguments = string.Format("\"{0}\" \"{1}\" /E /MT:32", srcPath, dstPath);
Process.Start(startInfo);

or

Process.Start("robocopy", string.Format("\"{0}\" \"{1}\" /E /MT:32", srcPath, dstPath));

This will work if robocopy is in the user's PATH. If not, you'll have to pass the full path to the executable

Answer 2

Your code works for me.

• SOLUTION 0 (EDIT)

You should use double quotes for you paths:

string.Format("/C ROBOCOPY \"{0}\" \"{1}\" /E /MT:32", srcPath, dstPath)

• SOLUTION 1

So I will guess that the problem is srcPath and dstPath . You must use the absolute path!

For example:

srcPath = @"C:\source";
dstPath = @"C:\destiny";

• SOLUTION 2

If this is not your problem, check if you have write and/or read permissions on the source and destiny paths.

• SOLUTION 3

Check this library: RoboSharp on Github . It is also available on Nuget .

• SOLUTION 4

Since you are copying from NETWORK, and the code works in the cmd , maybe the problem is the slashes .

This: srcPath = "\\127.0.0.1\\";

is different of: srcPath = @"\\127.0.0.1\\"; .

See this link to learn more about the at sign, @ .