Copy-item Files in Folders and subfolders in the same directory structure of source server using PowerShell

Question

I am struggling really hard to get this below script worked to copy the files in folders and sub folders in the proper structure (As the source server).

Lets say, there

Answer 1

This can be done just using Copy-Item. No need to use Get-Childitem. I think you are just overthinking it.

Copy-Item -Path C:\MyFolder -Destination \\Server\MyFolder -recurse -Force

I just tested it and it worked for me.

edit: included suggestion from the comments

# Add wildcard to source folder to ensure consistent behavior
Copy-Item -Path $sourceFolder\* -Destination $targetFolder -Recurse

Answer 2

I wanted a solution to copy files modified after a certain date and time which mean't I need to use Get-ChildItem piped through a filter. Below is what I came up with:

$SourceFolder = "C:\Users\RCoode\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\MyProject"
$ArchiveFolder = "J:\Temp\Robin\Deploy\MyProject"
$ChangesStarted = New-Object System.DateTime(2013,10,16,11,0,0)
$IncludeFiles = ("*.vb","*.cs","*.aspx","*.js","*.css")

Get-ChildItem $SourceFolder -Recurse -Include $IncludeFiles | Where-Object {$_.LastWriteTime -gt $ChangesStarted} | ForEach-Object {
    $PathArray = $_.FullName.Replace($SourceFolder,"").ToString().Split('\') 

    $Folder = $ArchiveFolder

    for ($i=1; $i -lt $PathArray.length-1; $i++) {
        $Folder += "\" + $PathArray[$i]
        if (!(Test-Path $Folder)) {
            New-Item -ItemType directory -Path $Folder
        }
    }   
    $NewPath = Join-Path $ArchiveFolder $_.FullName.Replace($SourceFolder,"")

    Copy-Item $_.FullName -Destination $NewPath  
}

Answer 3

one time i found this script, this copy folder and files and keep the same structure of the source in the destination, you can make some tries with this.

# Find the source files
$sourceDir="X:\sourceFolder"

# Set the target file
$targetDir="Y:\Destfolder\"
Get-ChildItem $sourceDir -Include *.* -Recurse |  foreach {

    # Remove the original  root folder
    $split = $_.Fullname  -split '\\'
    $DestFile =  $split[1..($split.Length - 1)] -join '\' 

    # Build the new  destination file path
    $DestFile = $targetDir+$DestFile

    # Move-Item won't  create the folder structure so we have to 
    # create a blank file  and then overwrite it
    $null = New-Item -Path  $DestFile -Type File -Force
    Move-Item -Path  $_.FullName -Destination $DestFile -Force
}

Answer 4

If you want to mirror same content from source to destination, try following one.

function CopyFilesToFolder ($fromFolder, $toFolder) {
    $childItems = Get-ChildItem $fromFolder
    $childItems | ForEach-Object {
         Copy-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination $toFolder -Recurse -Force
    }
}

Test:

CopyFilesToFolder "C:\temp\q" "c:\temp\w"

Answer 5

I had trouble with the most popular answer (overthinking). It put AFolder in the \Server\MyFolder\AFolder and I wanted the contents of AFolder and below in MyFolder. This didn't work.

Copy-Item -Verbose -Path C:\MyFolder\AFolder -Destination \\Server\MyFolder -recurse -Force

Plus I needed to Filter and only copy *.config files.

This didn't work, with "\*" because it did not recurse

Copy-Item -Verbose -Path C:\MyFolder\AFolder\* -Filter *.config -Destination \\Server\MyFolder -recurse -Force

I ended up lopping off the beginning of the path string, to get the childPath relative to where I was recursing from. This works for the use-case in question and went down many subdirectories, which some other solutions do not.

Get-Childitem -Path "$($sourcePath)/**/*.config" -Recurse | 
ForEach-Object {
  $childPath = "$_".substring($sourcePath.length+1)
  $dest = "$($destPath)\$($childPath)" #this puts a \ between dest and child path
  Copy-Item -Verbose -Path $_ -Destination $dest -Force   
}