This morning, a dear friend told me about how she lost two months worth of documentation after her hard drive failed. She was extremely distraught and fearful of the consequences (but she is a star employee so probably unnecessarily concerned).
She is also angry because she was told that her computer was backed up each night but it appears that the background backup tool never worked. According to her IT guy, there is nothing that can be done and will replace her hard drive on Monday. I say, nonsense to 'nothing can be done'! but... even though I believe there is probably a level of incompetence on the part of her 'IT guy', I very strongly believe that we all need to take personal responsibility for our own work.
To that end (and the real reason why I am posting this), I created a simple batch file that she can run each morning and at the end of each day. I instructed her to buy a USB stick or USB 2.5 portable hard drive. This batch file offers two options: 1) Backup assigned folders to a common folder (merge/overwrite only old files); 2) Backup to a 'permanent' dated archive folder. The reason for running it twice (start and end of day) is so that the end of day backup only takes a few second to copy over only the changed content.
It is very easy to edit and I have commented on the functions. Of course, if you need any assistance, please ask.
Code: Select all
@echo off
rem set source folders to backup
set cpy1=Image_Resources
set cpy2=Adobe_Projects
set cpy3=Doc_Projects
set cpy4=Users\SamanthaL\Documents
rem set time stamped destination folder name and create new folder
for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=:/" %%i in ("%DATE%") do set DATESTAMP=%%k%%j%%i
rem
SET /P ANSWER=Create a dated archive on backup (Y/N)?
if /i {%ANSWER%}=={y} (goto :yes)
if /i {%ANSWER%}=={Y} (goto :yes)
goto :no
:yes
echo ***** Creating Dated Archive on Backup *****
md F:\BACKUP\%DATESTAMP%
goto :start
:no
echo ***** Merging-copying new content to common backup folder *****
rem Create a text file to indicate when the last backup occurred in this folder.
echo >> F:\BACKUP\__current\%DATESTAMP%-Last_BACKUP.txt
set DATESTAMP=__current
:start
rem
xcopy D:\%cpy1% F:\BACKUP\%DATESTAMP%\%cpy1% /Y /S /I /D
xcopy D:\%cpy2% F:\BACKUP\%DATESTAMP%\%cpy2% /Y /S /I /D
xcopy D:\%cpy3% F:\BACKUP\%DATESTAMP%\%cpy3% /Y /S /I /D
xcopy C:\%cpy4% F:\BACKUP\%DATESTAMP%\documentation /Y /S /I /D
rem
pause
exit /b 1
BTW, I used to work as a forensic data recovery specialist and I have never encountered a drive that I couldn't extract data from. I'm going to see if I can recover her data over the weekend. I just have to find a way to instruct her how to remove the hard drive without her IT person going all crazy (he sounds like a dimwitted zealot).
). 