Tip 18: Perform Multithreaded File Copies with Robocopy in Windows 7
Windows included the popular Robocopy utility, which offers powerful file copy capabilities in a command line interface. Robocopy is included in Windows 7 and features a new multi-threaded copy option. To perform a multi-threaded copy, you use the new /MT[:n] switch, where n indicates the number of threads to be used. By default, n is 8 when you use the /MT option, and can be any value from 1 to 128.
Note that the multi-threaded option is not compatible with the /IPG and /EFSRAW options.
We ran some tests comparing Robocopy with and without the /MT (multithread) option with local disk, 1GbE network and 10GbE network. We tested a variety of numbers and sizes of files. I gave a presentation at our local user group meeting, and the presentation is available at demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_March_2011-03.html. The /MT option provides improved performance and in some cases, significantly improved performance.