by Elsewhere 41 Replies latest jw friends
I'm a big fan of xCopy.
I have it setup so that from time to time it will find all of my changed files and copy them to an external USB drive. This has saved my butt several times.
You should look at robocopy. It kicks serious ass. It has mirroring options and more advanced logging. Definitely worth checking out if you use xcopy for backups regulary. It's free from Microsoft.
I just disabled indexing and deleted the file.
There's no problem with that. Windows will just regenerate the index if you ever turn indexing back on.
I have played around with Robocopy a few times but I just don't "get it".
With xcopy I would do something like:
xcopy D:\*.* F:\Drive_D_Backup /e/d/c/y /exclude:Exclusion.txt > BackupLog_DriveD.txt
This will xcopy only files that have changed while excluding all of the files in the folders listed in the Exclusion.txt file (Windows, Application Data, etc). The entire action will then be logged to BackupLog_DriveD.txt
A few months ago I spent several hours trying to find a way to reproduce this in Robocopy but could not figure it out.
Something else... when looking at the help text it appears as though I can set it up so that files will automatically be copied should they change, that way I don't have to perform an actual backup operation. Am I reading that correctly?
/MON:n :: MONitor source; run again when more than n changes seen.
/MOT:m :: MOnitor source; run again in m minutes Time, if changed.
robocopy exclusions are done with the /XF or /XD switches. As far as I can see, you can't specify a file here whose contents describe what should be excluded. Instead you need to put each file or folder on the command line.
And yes, the monitor options will keep robocopy running so it can monitor for changes. You would still need to intially launch robocopy.
Another cool thing robocopy can do is delete from the destination when a file is deleted from the source. This may or may not be what you want depending on the situation, but xcopy can't do it at all.
Will the Robocopy keep running as an independent service or process, or will I need to keep a command window open?
If you run it interactively, you will see it stay running.
Well hell. Since I posted, I turned off indexing and now instead of 62GB available I've got 42GB! What the hell?
I love Windows Search ... particularly how it fails to find files that you can see yourself right there in Explorer!
It is a pile of crap and a complete waste of time just like the search features in other Micrrosoft products (Outlook, Sharepoint etc...)
There is a reason Google has wupped their ass ...
I love Windows Search ... particularly how it fails to find files that you can see yourself right there in Explorer!
Tell me about it. Last week I was doing a search of all Beatles mp3's I've got on the hard drive, I just wanted to eliminate duplicates and consolidate for backing up on to a CD, and Windows Search said it didn't find any. I was already in the folder looking at 168 files! *#$@@!!!!!
Chris
Think i'll just stay w windoze 4 (2000) for as long as i can.
S
