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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-06T11:28:46+00:00

I’m trying to make a batch file through Notepad to essentially automate a process

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I’m trying to make a batch file through Notepad to essentially automate a process of moving files from drive to drive.

My aim is to move files from my H drive to my A drive, H:\Arco\examplefile.csv to \A:\DSE\Open_Access_Data\ARCo.

I also want to automate this job to run every 30 minutes if possible. But if I need to do it by clicking it then so be it. So far, all I’ve managed to do is copy files over to my desktop. I can’t seem to get it to go between my directories. 

COPY H:\dehpc14_Disk_Quota_Report.csv %userprofile%\Desktop
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  1. Editorial Team

    This should work:

    :LOOP
copy H:\Arco\examplefile.csv A:\DSE\Open_Access_Data\ARCo /y
timeout /t 1800
goto :LOOP

    That will copy your files every 30 seconds and overwrite any existing files.

    Note: The timeout command is only availble in Vista and above, if you need to use this on XP let me know.

    To launch the batch file on system startup you can either put it in the startup folder of the user or use the registry.

    The startup folder for the current user is

    C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

    For all users

    C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

    Or you can use the registry which I personally prefer. Create a string value with the path to your batch file in

    Current user

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

    Computer users

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

    Both registry options will require admin rights though.

    To do either startup or registry in batch respectively

    copy %0 "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup" /y

reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /v "MyBatchFile" /d "%0" /f

    Which will either copy itself to startup or add itself to the registry each time it runs. So you can either do it manually or have it do this itself (above commands) from the first time you run it.

    The %0 is the batch files own path, if you want to use the commands from somewhere else, or just from cmd then type in the full path of the batch file instead.

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