Make incremental and differential backups with Robocopy

backuprobocopy

I wanted to know if it is possible to make incremental and differential backups using just Robocopy and arguments.

Putting it in a simple bat and making that bat run in Task Scheduler seems like a simple backup plan that I would need.

I think I prefer "incremental" because differential would erase things that I don't have anymore (using /MIR argument)

Best Answer

Technically can, but probably shouldn't if you require the ability to roll back to a point in time. It's not really what the program was intended for.

http://ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html

Might be better off using something like Git. Or there are native Windows options

VSS - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee923636%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
Windows Server Backup - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770757.aspx

Related Solutions

Ubuntu Backup – Autorotating Incremental Backups with Cron

You may want to try rsnapshot: http://rsnapshot.org/ It makes use of rsync and hardlinks to achieve system snapshots, which is basically what you need. It also comes in the repositories of Ubuntu.

Windows – Backup with Mercurial and Robocopy

To perform a mirror while ignoring certain file exentions, try this:

robocopy c:\temp\source c:\temp\dest /e /purge /xf *.hg

I tested it a bit here and it appears to leave the .hg files alone on the destination

I also recommend the /z flag (restartable for large files) and have had to resort to the /fft flag in the past when dealing with servers having different time granularity : http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3573

edit: ... my example above was assuming files named *.hg ... to do the same and ignore directories named *.hg, use this :

robocopy c:\temp\source c:\temp\dest /e /z /purge /xd *.hg

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu Backup – Autorotating Incremental Backups with Cron

Windows – Backup with Mercurial and Robocopy

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