Copy-Item and exclude folders

Question

I need to copy all of my c:\inetpub directory to a new location but exclude the following folders and their subfolders:

c:\inetpub\custerr
c:\inetpub\history
c:\inetpub\logs
c:\inetpub\temp
c:\inetpub\wwwroot

So far I am doing this:

# Directory name is created with a format string
$dirName = "\\servername\folder1 _ {0}\inetpub" -f (get-date).ToString("yyyy-MM-dd-hh-mm-ss")
$dirName # Check the output

# Create dir if needed
if(-not (test-path $dirName)) {
    md $dirName | out-null
} else {
    write-host "$dirName already exists!"
}

#Copy Backup File to Dir
Copy-Item "\\servername\c$\inetpub\*" $dirName -recurse

Answer 1

This is a simple example of something you could do. Build an array of the parent folders that you want to exclude. Since you are accessing them via UNC paths we cannot really use the c:\ path (We can get around this but what I am about to show should be good enough.).

Then use Get-ChildItem to get all the folders in the inetpub directory. Filter out the exclusions using -notin and pass the rest to Copy-Item

$excludes = "custerr","history","logs","temp","wwwroot"
Get-ChildItem "c:\temp\test" -Directory | 
    Where-Object{$_.Name -notin $excludes} | 
    Copy-Item -Destination $dirName -Recurse -Force

You need at least PowerShell 3.0 for this to work.

Answer 2

Copy-Item -Path (Get-Item -Path "$path\*" -Exclude ('Folder1', 'File.cmd', 'File.exe', 'Folder2')).FullName -Destination $destination -Recurse -Force

Replace:

$path by your source folder

('Folder1', 'File.cmd', 'File.exe', 'Folder2') by your specific files/folder to exclude

$destination by your destination folder