Robocopy backup only changed files

That is to say, if you accidentally delete or modify something and run the backup unknowingly, these mistakes will be synchronized to the target directory, and you cannot retrieve any of the older copies. Otherwise you could also use a backup tool with recovery options to avoid this situation. Open CMD and input this command, your files in source folder will be copied to the destination folder.

Of course, you could enrich your Robocopy incremental backup script with practical switches. Input the command and press Enter key to run the first-time backup. If you add or modify files in source directory later and run Robocopy again, the changed and newly added files will be synchronized to the destination. It also backs up all the subdirectories even empty folders.

During copying the source directory, it will skip the files that already have the same or newer copies in destination directory.

You could combine Robocopy incremental backup with switches you need. To perform incremental backup with Robocopy on regular basis, you can either add parameters or use Windows Task Scheduler. Open notepad, enter the command you want to implement. Then give it a name you like, Robocopy incremental backup, for example.

Change the extension from. Open it, choose to Create Basic Task. Enter the task name and description, then choose when or what to trigger the task.

Here I choose Daily and specify the time point in the next page. Then click Browse to select the Robocopy incremental backup. Confirm the information and click Finish to complete the process. Then you can find the scheduled task in Task Scheduler Library and execute or delete it anytime you like. Note there are many parameters to customize the backup. If you have further needs, there are some common switches you could use in your Robocopy incremental backup script.

Click here to view the full edition of Robocopy syntax. The default value of n is 1,, one million retries. Anyway, I find it a curiousity to use ntfs file system, mounting it on Linux, and then sharing it. Ntfs is not very Linux friendly so the problems may occur. Even with no changed files, robocopy would take almost 40 minutes to complete when using Samba. Now with iSCSI robocopy takes under 17 minutes for the same thing.

I was able to run:. It took many hours. Then during the evening outage windows I ran it again to just copy over what changed during the day.

The second time it took less than 15 minutes and I was done. Windows xp dont have robocopy, so i downloaded microsoft windows server tool kit, and now msdos comands works. Best options for me when i want to back-up something, better than any software.

Here is what I am running I am basically trying to backup a directory and run this command once a week to make sure the destination always has only the changes from the source. Currently I use what you have above but I think it might be overkill Its going to a networked drive. Everything gets copied all over again.

The latency accross the network is causing it. Archive bit is a relic from DOS times, unfortunately it's not very trustworthy. You can freely remove it from a file even if it's new and should be backed up, or add it even if file wasn't changed. It pays to experiment and analyse the results. There are some softwares installed in server, which access all the files in server. As a result all the files are considered as newer, though they are not modified like in properties option of file shows last modified date as Feb and last accessed date as Oct Robocopy doesn't copy files basing on their access time, but modification time.

You must be mistaken - having the file open doesn't make it a candidate to copy over older file. But if the file is in use and locked for exclusive access, its contents will change, but modification time will be written when the file is unlocked. Until then, modification time will not change. Are you sure you're not copying file that is in use?

File should be unlocked prior to copying. However, there are a number of directories and files some quite large video directories that are always re-copied, even though nothing has changed Robocopy logs report the files as "newer" and "older" even though they have not been "touched" since the initial run.

The file attributes on these files look identical, so why does robocopy think they are older or newer? Why is it re-copying these files every time I run my script? I award you cool points! This resolved it. I have been looking for an explanation for this problem for some time - thank you very much this has solved my issue. Office Office Exchange Server. Not an IT pro?

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