Robocopy: ERROR : Invalid Parameter #4 : "/MT"

David picture David · Dec 12, 2013 · Viewed 7.4k times · Source

I have a server that I am working on that is using Windows 2008 SP2 Enterprise and I have found that the installed version of Robocopy is missing the MT (multithread) switch.

Since I'm working with enterprise hardware, having multiple threads can really help my performance so I'd prefer not to have to remove the switch from the copy operation that I am attempting.

What I don't understand is why the installed version is missing this switch since this is a 2008 windows instance. Was the MT switch introduced in 2008R2?

Is there any way I can safely update this version of robocopy (such as copying the executable from one of my other environments)?

To provide just a little background for contextual purposes this command is being issued as part of an automated backup process developed in SSIS. This process executes normally in other environments, so I'm trying to establish a means of upgrading all the older versions with a more recent version of robocopy to maintain functionality. Otherwise I will have to contextually disable the inclusion of the switch which is a pain.

Answer

Luke Z picture Luke Z · Jan 4, 2014

According to the documentation on Technet, the /MT parameter applies to Server 2008 R2 but not Server 2008. I'm not sure if this is due to just the version of the robocopy executable or some other restriction.

What is the File Version of your robocopy.exe, as shown in the file properties?

You might try to pull the newest version of Robocopy (6.1.7601) out of KB2639043 and see if that works for you. Though, information I found on this thread suggests that newer versions of Robocopy don't work at all on Server 2008.