How can I schedule specific vista backups?

February 12, 2007 9:24 AM

Can anyone advise me how to make Vista schedule copying to my external drive?

What i need to do is setup a schedule whereby Vista copies Folders from specified folders and/or drives to specified folders on an external hard drive. However, i need it to be able to specify ONLY folders created within the last x days and which are not already on the external.
I was thinking some kind of batch file but i am clueless as to where i would begin writing such a thing :)
Vista's scheduler program is a souped up version of the XP one, but the principles would be the same i imagine

Any help offered would be greatly appreciated

posted by mrbenn to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: The best command to do the actual copy would probably be 'robocopy'. Type 'robocopy /?' at a command line to see all of its options. Note that this command used to be only be available with the windows resource kit, but it now comes standard with Vista.

Once you have all the arguments set on robocopy the way you want, you should be able to throw that into a batch file and schedule it to run when needed.
posted by Crossbar at 9:45 AM on February 12, 2007

My favorite tool to sync folders to my external HDD is also a Microsoft product, called SyncToy. It is available for Vista here. It is graphical and a snap to use and set up. You can use Windows task scheduler for Vista to get it to run regularly, or you can just use it ad hoc.

Hope this helps.
posted by wonderwisdom at 12:29 PM on February 12, 2007

Response by poster: Robocopy looks like being the one i use, I googled some tips and tricks with it and it seems to be perfect for what i need to do.
This is the command i am using (so far)
robocopy f: p:\tv *.* /MAXAGE:1 /XD *recyc*
this checks how old a folder is and copies the contents across. However I am having a small problem. When i run it, it is also creating empty folders on the destination drive named the same as folders on the source which have multiple subdirs (which are older than the date specified by the /MAXAGE switch). Can anyone point me in the direction of what i am doing wrong??
posted by mrbenn at 9:53 AM on February 14, 2007