Powershell Copy-Item not keeping folder structure - powershell

Question

I have the below script to copy data from a local folder to a remote folder created with the current date. However the files are copying but the folder structure is not.
$Date = (Get-Date).ToString("MMddyyyy"),$_.Extension
$Source = "E:\Folder1\\*"
$Dest = "\\Server\Share\Folder2"
$Username = "Username"
$Password = ConvertTo-SecureString "Password" -AsPlainText -Force
$mycreds = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($Username, $Password)
Remove-PSDrive -Name T
Start-Sleep -s 1
New-PSDrive -Name T -PSProvider FileSystem -Root $Dest -Credential $mycreds -Persist
if (!(Test-Path "T:\$Date"))
{
md -Path "T:\$Date"
}
Get-ChildItem -Path $Source -Recurse | % { Copy-Item -Path $_ -Destination "T:\$Date" -Container -Force -Verbose }
Could anyone advise where I am going wrong here?
Thank you.

Answer 1

Nice script, I think we can get this sorted in no time!
Why this happened
The reason this is failing is in this step right here:
Get-ChildItem -Path $Source -Recurse
The -Recurse switch is causing you pain. To illustrate why this is, I created a simple folder structure.
When you run Get-ChildItem -Path $Source -Recurse alone, you'll get a recursive listing of all files in the $Source path, like so:
PS C:\temp\stack> Get-ChildItem -Recurse
Directory: C:\temp\stack
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
d----- 8/4/2017 10:50 AM Source
Directory: C:\temp\stack\Source
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
d----- 8/4/2017 10:57 AM 1
d----- 8/4/2017 10:57 AM 2
d----- 8/4/2017 10:57 AM 3
d----- 8/4/2017 10:57 AM 4
Directory: C:\temp\stack\Source\1
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
-a---- 8/4/2017 10:57 AM 20 Archive.rar
-a---- 8/4/2017 10:56 AM 0 File01.bmp
Well, in the next step of your script, you pipe that output over to Copy-Item for every single file.
You're basically expressly telling PowerShell 'take this folder and all of it's subfolders and everything, and dump them all in this one folder, ignoring the folder structure'
How to fix
What you really want to do is simply move the -Recurse parameter over to Copy-Item, and you're done :)
Get-ChildItem -Path $Source |
Copy-Item -Destination "T:\$Date" -Container -Recurse -Force -Verbose
Hope that helps, have a nice 🎃day!

Answer 2

This question is a few years old, but in case someone arrives here like I did...
In another post, a user suggested using robocopy. It worked great for me:
robocopy "source/folder" "target/folder" "*.file_extension" /s
This command copies from the source folder the files that match the given filter, replicating the folder structure in the destination folder.
In this case, it would be used like:
robocopy "E:\Folder1\" "\\Server\Share\Folder2" "*" /s