CODEWITHSUNDEEP
robocopy
user1340654
user1340654

Reputation: 425

Why? ROBOCOPY: ERROR 32 (0x00000020) Accessing Destination Directory. The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process

Thanks in advance for your help.

I am using ROBOCOPY to copy some files from on drive to another on the same computer. Every once in awhile, I get an error. And instead of retrying 999 times as it should, it retries once and fails. I have a couple questions:

  1. Why would this error be happening in the first place?

  2. Why isn't ROBOCOPY retrying the 999 times as defined?

Commands are below:

mkdir C:\Users\tempuser\AppData\Local\temp\test1
robocopy /R:999 /W:5 /NP /E /XO /NFL /NDL E:\test1 C:\Users\tempuser\AppData\Local\temp\test1 test* 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   ROBOCOPY     ::     Robust File Copy for Windows                              
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Started : Monday, March 25, 2013 4:20:51 AM
   Source : E:\test1 
     Dest  : C:\Users\tempuser\AppData\Local\temp\test1

    Files : test*

  Options : /NDL /NFL /S /E /DCOPY:DA /COPY:DAT /NP /XO /R:999 /W:5 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2013/03/25 04:20:51 ERROR 32 (0x00000020) Accessing Destination Directory C:\Users\tempuser\AppData\Local\temp\test1
The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

Waiting 5 seconds... Retrying...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

               Total    Copied   Skipped  Mismatch    FAILED    Extras
    Dirs :         1         0         0         0         1         0
   Files :         0         0         0         0         0         0
   Bytes :         0         0         0         0         0         0
   Times :   0:00:05   0:00:00                       0:00:05   0:00:00
   Ended : Monday, March 25, 2013 4:20:56 AM

Upvotes: 6

Views: 17031

Answers (3)

Bev H
Bev H

Reputation: 11

I hope someone finds this helpful. This "fix" has worked for me several times so good luck.

Simply logout of the server with file explorer and PowerShell running... force close any apps running at the sign-out Windows page and log back into the server . Run your robocopy script and your locked process would have been released.

Sorry if it doesn't work for you.

Upvotes: 1

Fandango68
Fandango68

Reputation: 4888

There is no "bug" in ROBOCOPY.

Something is "locking" your source folders and files from time-to-time. Not always, as that's proof based on the fact that your copies work "at times".

I would place a script to copy "out" your source files into another location (drive preferably), and then use ROBOCOPY from that new location into your other or final location. Use the move option to keep the intermediate location free for the next backups, etc.

I use this...

robocopy <source path> <target path> <files> /s /j /r:2 /w:5 /log+:robocopy.log

Upvotes: 0

Felix
Felix

Reputation: 433

This is quite probably a bug in robocopy. It has at least one other bug surrounding Error 32 / in use files: /b (backup) mode will fail with this error even if a file is not exclusively locked (and is copyable with 'copy', 'xcopy', windows explorer, and robocopy without /b), so I suspect there are bugs in how it handles in-use files in general.

Upvotes: 2

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