Why does RoboCopy create a hidden system folder?

On my system (Vista), powershell shows the c:\ drive as having both hidden and system attributes set.

    PS C:\Users\michael.DOMAIN> Get-Item c:\


    Directory:


Mode           LastWriteTime       Length Name
----           -------------       ------ ----
d--hs     8/18/2009 12:19 PM        <DIR> C:\

After copying the files, you can use attrib to fix them. Check out attrib /? for details.

It has to do with copying the hidden/system System Volume Information from the root of a disk - if it gets copied, the target directory gets the same attributes system/hidden.

Creating the directory before copying does not help as robocopy will hide it too.

Add the /A-:SH switch to ignore system files.

More information in this Microsoft Technet discussion.

I have also ran into this problem. It seems like this hidden folder comes up when the source directory is a root of the drive, eg. D:\ or F:\. These folders will contain the system and hidden attributes, and being a source root folder, it can't be removed by the attrib -s -h command.

In this example, F:\ is the source G:\ is the destination.

You can see the attributes in PowerShell. You'll see the mode d--hs for directory, hidden & system. Try the get-item command C:\> Get-Item F:\

Robocopy supposedly will not create it as a hidden folder if the folder exists. I've read on a few posts that using a /CREATE will do the trick, or you can create the folders manually ahead of time. I have to do further testing as well as other combinations to verify this fully.

Otherwise, you can do a attrib -h -s G:\Destination_Folder to remove the system and hidden attribute after the copy.