ROBOCOPY - Create Backup Script

I don't know what you mean about having Robocopy copy a linked folder. Robocopy won't traverse an HTML URL to copy a folder; you must enter the location of the folder you want Robocopy to copy.

Show your Robocopy code.

COPY and XCOPY are not Robocopy commands. COPY and XCOPY are each separate applications, so you haven't been using Robocopy at all.

IIRC, Copy and Xcopy are essentially file copy utilities, so at their most basic would copy selected files whereas you also want to copy directories.

Robocopy will do what you want, because Robocopy is natively a folder copy application rather than file copy, so copying a folder by default includes its file contents.

You would use this format:

ROBOCOPY "source" "destination" options

For example, if your source folder is:

C:\web files

and your destination is:

C:\Backups\web backup

You could use this command line:

ROBOCOPY "C:\web files" "C:\Backups\web backup" /MIR

/MIR will MIRror a directory tree, including all sub-folders and including empty sub-folders, and of course including file contents of the source folder(s). You can add other options as required.

Can you use this over a LAN connection?
I need to copy SQL .bak files from a server, using 2008 R2, to another server, also using 2008 R2 over a LAN.
Each system is on a different ip scheme and using vlans.

With this, how could this work?
I need to run this automatically every month.

I am not experienced in this, so ANY information would be grateful!

I did find the beginning tutorial very informational!!!

Thanks

Mike

ok...

here is what I wrote but havent implemented it yet

Does it look correct?

::Source path
set sourcepath=\\10.107.145.12\"c:\program files\microsoft sql server\mssql10_50.mssqlserver\mssql\*.bak"

:destination path
set destinationpath=\\10.107.128.11\E$\"backup sql files"

::Log path
set logpath=E:\Logs\Robocopy\

::Include format yyyy-mm-dd#hh-mm-ss.ms in log filename
set filename=Robocopy_%date:~-4,4%-%date:~-7,2%-%date:~-10,2%#%time::=-%.txt

::Run command

Hey Guys

I need help with a backup script to do backups on my laptop running Win7 Pro x64 to my Win2008R2 server.
Here is the script i wrote
@echo off
TITLE Backup program

echo Please save any open documents and then close all programs, especially Outlook.
echo off
pause

cls
net use R: /delete
goto begin

:begin
net use R: \\surulere\backup /USER:conet.com\koladapo Kq14lakoil
robocopy C:\Users\Kola R:\Kola /e /z /R:5 /W:1

echo.
echo The backup has finished.

goto done

:done
pause
if exist R: net use R: /d /y
exit

I am sorry i did not put comments to explain the script better. but the summary of what i did is
1. i delete any drives mapped to R:
2. then i map a share on my server to R: logging on with my domain username and password
3. then i use the robocopy command to copy my user folder under user/username to the mapped drive.

My problem with the program is that after running it, the script spent a whole 24HOURS! backing up the App Data. I had to stop the script from running when i got back from work the next day. The reason why i am backing up my whole User folder is because i would like to backup folders like AppData and Favorites where browser data and Outlook data files are stored.

Can anybody proffer a reason as to why the script seems to take so long backing up AppData and how i can fix the problem.

Thank you

/Z copies in resume mode. This can slow down the process, but it also may provide a better result when copying across a network when network communication is lost temporarily. You'll have to decide if you need it or not.

If you have a multi-threaded processor, you could experiment with assigning more threads to Robocopy. While this may not make much difference for the initial copy, subsequent copies (updating the backup) can be much faster with many threads checking file attributes. e.g. /MT:32 would use 32 threads, whereas default is 8.

Also, remember that the first copy will be slow as every file must be transferred to the backup location. Subsequent copies (updating the backup) will be faster, as Robocopy will check the files and transfer only those that have changed or are new.

Why just the /E backup option? From your description, I would have thought that you would not want to store files that had been deleted from the source C: drive. If you want the backup to replicate the current state of C:, then you can use /MIR, to mirror the directory tree, the same as using /E to include even empty folders (as you have done) plus /PURGE to delete items from backup that you deleted from source. Essentially, if you want the backup to be an exact copy of the source, use /MIR.

Thank you for all your replies.
@Golden My Appdata folder is just 4.62GB. I will try it without the /z option and reply
@acornada I thought the /e option meant Robocopy should copy all subdirectories and even empty ones.
@Kaktussoft can you explain a bit better about the /XJ switch as this is the explain from the link you posted"/XJ :: eXclude Junction points. (normally included by default)."

Thank you guys