It is always a good idea to keep backups of your stuff. Unfortunately, some folders like %APPDATA% can not be copied while Windows has locked files inside. That's where the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) comes into play. It basically creates a consistent snapshot of the data and allows to access it regardless of file locks. I wrote a small batch script for Windows 7 that does the following:
- Create snapshot of folder
- Mirror the folder to another place
- Destroy snapshot
The script relies on three tools, only one of which ships with the vanilla Windows 7 installation. These are the dependencies:
vshadow.exe(part of the Windows 7 SDK:Bin\x64\vsstools\vshadow.exe)dosdev.exe(part of the free Volume Shadow Copy Simple Client)robocopy.exe(installed with Windows 7)
You can download the batch file below. It creates a backup of your own user's %APPDATA% folder (C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming) to the target folder D:\Backup\AppData. The script needs to run as Administrator in order to create snapshots.
Download: backup_appdata.cmd
Though idea is good it doesn't really work
AntwortenLöschenSeems good but didn't work out for me. One of the reason was I was unable to understand this command line, and other is its buggy and sometimes some of my files went missing because of it. I was looking for a GUI alternative to it which could work better than it. My search stopped when I found GS Richcopy 360. It has made my life easier, its multi threaded file transfer ability can handle way more threads than robocopy. I would recommend to try it, although its paid but its worth the price. After all, time is money. ;)
AntwortenLöschen