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I'm trying to backup my current user's AppData folder.

Because the folder is quite big, I wanted to use robocopy.

However, robocopy is having mess with symbolics links.

Especially, in the user folder, there's a symbolic (I guess) link named Application data and that points to Roaming folder.

There's also within the Local folder, another link named 'Application data' that points to local folder. This ends with a recursive infinite loop local\application data\application data\application data and so on, each time copy the whole local folder.

I tried to add the /sl switch to robocopy, without success.

How to properly copy my user folder ?

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  • You can try xcopy with /b option.
    – Sandeep
    Jul 6, 2018 at 10:00
  • Do note, these symbolic links are there for backwards compatibility. If you are only interested in a backup, not a functional profile, you can ignore these links alltogether.
    – LPChip
    Jul 6, 2018 at 10:18
  • @LPChip The AppData folder doesn't contain a symbolic link named "Application data", that would in the user profile itself as far as I know and also only should be pointing to the roaming part of the AppData folder. It wouldn't make sense for backward compatibility as the AppData structure didn't exist before (No AppData\Local, AppData\LocalLow and AppData\Roaming).
    – Seth
    Jul 6, 2018 at 10:38

2 Answers 2

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I've had good results copying the User folder using the /xj switch, which excludes NTFS junction points.

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  • 1
    Yes /xj is the correct switch to exclude junctions (aka symbolic links), which is what is in the user's profile folder by default. I use it all the time for exactly this purpose. Jul 6, 2018 at 12:15
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Using the /xj flag to exclude NTFS junction points (which is what the "Application Data" is) seems to do the trick for me.

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