Back it up
Quick backup script with Windows’ built-in tools
The point here is to make a copy of your data (the important stuff), then move that copy off of your computer. There are programs out there that polish up this process and make it easy, but some are pricey. I like “Syncovery”, personally because it offers a dizzying array of options, most of which are never used. Windows and macOS both come with utilities that when scripted properly, will make for a nice and simple backup regimen.Â
On the Windows side, there’s xcopy and robocopy. They both do the same thing (copy files), with robocopy being more versatile for copying to a network location, or between network locations. If you have Windows 7 or later, both are already installed on your system.Â
Enter the following into a text editor (notepad.exe, notepad++.exe).
xcopy c:\users\lebowski\documents\* F:\backup\documents\%date:~0,3%\* /Y /Q /S
The above command will copy the Dude’s documents to F\backup\documents\<Mon|Tue|Wed|Thu|Fri|Sat|Sun>. Hopefully, F is an external USB drive of some sort or a mapped drive on a server.
/Y = “Are you sure you want to overwrite an existing file?” Yes
/Q = Copies quietly, without echoing progress in the terminal
/S = Copies all directories and sub directories, unless they are empty.
This might give a few redundant copies of your data, one for each day of the week. If target storage cannot handle that, or you’re just into data-deduplication, then replace “%date:~0,3%” with a static folder, or omit that level entirely.
Robocopy is a bit more involved, but it is worth taking the extra time to get familiar.Â
robocopy c:\users\lebowski\documents f:\backup\Documents /NDL /NFL /ZB /COPYALL /NP /r:1 /w:1 /LOG+:C:\RobocopyDocsToBackup.log
Lebowski’s docs are going to the same place, just in style this time.
/NDL = Does not log the names of the directories it copies.Â
/NFL = File names are not logged either...
/ZB = Copies files in restart mode, if that doesn’t work, it uses backup mode instead.
/COPYALL = Self-explanatory
/NP = “No problem”, not actually it means that the progress of the operation will not be displayed as in “No progress.”
/r:1 = 1 is the number of times a failed copy will be reattempted.
/w:1 = One second will elapse between the failed re-copy attempt(s).Â
/LOG = A log file is written to the root of C: in this case (probably not the best place to drop a log file).
Once you are satisfied that the commands are doing what they are supposed to be doing, save two copies of the file with either a BAT or CMD file extension, “backup.cmd” for example. Place one copy with your other work (for safe keeping), and the other outside of your user profile (to run in a scheduled task).Â
Open an administrative command prompt and enter the following.
SchTasks /Create /SC DAILY /TN “Daily_Backup” /TR “C:\Windows\System32\backup.cmd” /ST 00:00Â
/CREATE = ...
/SC DAILY = Schedule? Daily from <MINUTE, HOURLY, DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY, ONCE, ONSTART, ONLOGON, ONIDLE>
/TN = Task Name “Daily_Backup” (The command wouldn’t run for me with a space in the name)
/TR = “Task to run”, in this case our backup.cmd
/ST = “Scheduled time”, zero hour, midnight
The task will run under the user account which created the task, so make sure that account had read access to the source directories and write access to the destination.
Cheers and thanks to the following online resources!
Microsoft Schtasks page
Microsoft Technet “Robocopy and a few examples” page
This dude’s page