Data Storage - Basic backing up

Author

Basic backing up

Ann W. Bell

2004-12-10, 7:45 am

Hi,

I have a Windows XP computer with an 80GB hard drive.
The documents and other files that I need to backup take about 20GB.
I can't remember if that's compressed or uncompressed - I just tend
to zip or .tar.gz them up.

If possible I'd like to have at least my documents automatically
mirrored during the day onto (at least) one external hard drive.
If the cost isn't too prohibitive, perhaps the whole 80GB hard
drive could be mirrored.

Preferably, I'd also like to be able to do incremental backups
during weekdays (i.e. backup only those files that changed "today").

If I had Linux installed, the 'find' command could easily do incremental
backups at least. But on XP I tried using DJGPP to simulate Unix
commands like these, and I found trying to do things like
find .... | xargs ....
was just too flaky, constantly giving errors.

I'm probably looking for some sort of 'simple' commercial or
open source solution. I know that what I'm asking for (mirroring including
incremental backups of a single hard disk) is not very hard and is
standard, but I just haven't studied backup techniques before.
I hope that I can find something that's fairly low cost.

P.S. Preferably, I would also be able to either password-protect or
encrypt the external hard drive, or the individual files within it.
Something like GPG can very securely encrypt individual files, but
the way it renames the files (to .gpg and deleting the prefix) seems
like it can be hard to restore them to their individual names
(I could be wrong though some someone please set me straight if so).

Thanks very much for any advice that you can provide to me!

Joerg Lenneis

2004-12-10, 5:45 pm

Ann W Bell:

> Hi,
> I have a Windows XP computer with an 80GB hard drive.
> The documents and other files that I need to backup take about 20GB.
> I can't remember if that's compressed or uncompressed - I just tend
> to zip or .tar.gz them up.

[...]

Ann,

two pointers. The Resource Kit for Windows Server 2003 (free) contains
a command line program named robocopy, which is almost as useful as
rsync (you seem to have a Unix background, so maybe you are familiar
with it). As the name implies it can do all kinds of file copying and
mirroring as well as incremental backups. One of its interesting
features is constant monitoring if a file tree: It runs in the
background and copies changed files somewhere as soon as a predefined
number of changes is exceeded in the tree monitored. You can get it
directly from

http://download.microsoft.com/downl...057/rktools.exe

or goto http://download.microsoft.com/ and search for "resource kit"
if that link expires.

Alternatively or additionally, go to http://www.cygwin.com/ and have a
look at the Cygwin project. That is an implementation of a POSIX layer
for windows that enables a constantly growing number of old friends
from the Unix world to run under Windows. gzip, find, rsync, tar, cpio
md5sum et. al. are all there and work very well, enabling you to build
a backup script to your liking.

best regards,

--

Joerg Lenneis

email: lenneis@wu-wien.ac.at

Maxim S. Shatskih

2004-12-16, 6:26 pm

> Alternatively or additionally, go to http://www.cygwin.com/ and have a
> look at the Cygwin project. That is an implementation of a POSIX layer

Cygwin is very slow due to stupid fork() implementation, which does memcpy() of
the whole address space - instead of using the kernel-provided fork() by
NtCreateProcess with SectionHandle == NULL. From what I understand, it is the
hatred to Microsoft which caused Cygwin authors to not use this facility

So, if you will be unsatisfied with Cygwin speed, try Microsoft Interix - the
UNIX emulation layer for Windows by Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sf...ads/default.asp

On the other hand, I suspect it has not-so-rich set of utilities as Cygwin.
They have the header files/libraries to build the UNIX source code there
(probably by MS compiler only - can be obtained for El Cheapo with Windows DDK
which is shipped at CD's+shipping cost), and also have "awk, grep, sed, tr,
cut, tar, cpio and many others", as also NFS client and server (dunno their
quality).

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
maxim@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

Maxim S. Shatskih

2004-12-16, 6:26 pm

> backups at least. But on XP I tried using DJGPP to simulate Unix
> commands like these, and I found trying to do things like
> find .... | xargs ....

Use VBScript on XP. Works fine, the language is top-stupid - which means good
readability of your own scripts in the future.

Below is the sample script which compares the files in 2 directory trees. You
can edit it to do backups.

Dim secondFolderName
Dim fsObject
Dim shellObject

Sub processFolder(baseFolderName, folderSuffix)
longSuffix = folderSuffix + "\"
Set folder = fsObject.GetFolder(baseFolderName + longSuffix)
' First process subfolders
Set subfolders = folder.SubFolders
For Each newFolder In subfolders
processFolder baseFolderName, longSuffix + newFolder.Name
Next
' Then process files here
folderPath = baseFolderName + longSuffix
WScript.Echo "Processing " + Mid(folderSuffix, 2)
shellObject.Run "CMD /C >>\t.txt 2>>\e.txt FC /B " + folderPath + "*.* " +
secondFolderName + longSuffix + "*.*", 0, True
End Sub

If WScript.Arguments.Count = 2 Then
Set fsObject = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set shellObject = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
secondFolderName = WScript.Arguments(1)
processFolder WScript.Arguments(0), ""
Else
WScript.Echo "Usage: CMPDIR dir1 dir2"
End If

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
maxim@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com