Copy files using command prompt?

Question

My computer will not start at all, how to you copy my documents over to a USB using command prompt?

Answer 1

You need to either change to the system drive and then change to the C:\documents and settings\username\documents

Windows 7 : C:\user\username\documents

or My documents.

Then you need to use the xcopy command to ensure it copies all the folders and files within Documents, or it will just copy the files immediately under documents and dump the rest. Open the command window and check how by typing xcopy /?

There are a lot of switches to add to the command line, so note the ones you need, especially the /S and those relating to how it handles directories. Otherwise you can lose files.

Answer 2

Assuming your USB is drive F, and that you want to copy your files into a folder named backup on your USB drive, then the command is



xcopy "C:\path-to-your-documents-folder" F:\backup /c /e /h /i /q /s



path-to-your-documents-folder might be:



For Windows XP:

"Documents and Settings\USER-NAME\" of course without the quotations marks



For Windows Vista/7:

"users\USER-NAME\Documents" again without the quotation marks



where USER-NAME is the name of the account that you use to login to Windows.



note: you can add the /v switch after the /s switch to verify that each file is copied. But this will cost you more time to do the copying. Try without the /v first.

Answer 3

You are going to still want admin authority to open it. To get to command prompt, click on start orb, kind cmd prompt into search bar. Press enter. That should take you to the command immediate.