{"id":3500,"date":"2012-10-22T00:01:27","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T07:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=3500"},"modified":"2012-10-25T09:16:55","modified_gmt":"2012-10-25T16:16:55","slug":"doing-a-manual-backup-automatically-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=3500","title":{"rendered":"Doing a Manual Backup Automatically, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

Backup! It’s so important! I’ve written about it lots. But recently I received an email question, “How can I backup my stuff to a thumb drive?” It’s a decent question.
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\nFirst, you could use a regular backup program, such as the stinky one that comes with Windows, to backup to a thumb drive. But today’s backup programs lack the sophistication to do so. Also, a 16GB thumb drive lacks the storage capacity to make a traditional backup program interested in using that media.<\/p>\n

Second, you can manually copy the files, by dragging them from one window to the thumb drive’s window. The problem: That operation is a pain to setup, not to mention that you have to remind yourself to do it. And that process kinda goes against the whole “computers make your life easier” argument. What would be better is:<\/p>\n

Third, a utility that would backup your stuff — say just your work files or a single, popular folder full o’ stuff — to a thumb drive. That tool would be the robocopy<\/code> command. Yes, it’s a DOS command. Be afraid!<\/p>\n

Fourth, you could automate the process by using the Windows Task Scheduler. Not many people use the Task Scheduler, mostly because its interface is horrid, but it’s a valid tool for such operations.<\/p>\n

I present the solution to these issues over this week’s blog posts in three steps.<\/p>\n

Step 1: Discover how much storage space you need<\/strong><\/p>\n

There’s no point backing up to a thumb drive when you really a whole hand drive.<\/p>\n

On my PC, I do a nightly thumb-drive sync of my entire Work<\/code> folder. That folder contains all my current book projects. That includes completed-but-not-published books, the one I’m working on now, plus upcoming books and proposals. The Work<\/code> folder contains subfolders for all that stuff — a monstrous directory tree of files.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that I’m backing up, or duplicating, just one folder (and it’s subfolders). I’m not copying my email files, downloads, porn, or other current documents. The key to this process as I’m describing it is to limit the manual backup to just some key files.<\/p>\n

Of course, I could ventur off into the realm of file organization, which makes backing up a single folder possible, but I’ll save that task for another blog post.<\/p>\n

The thumb drive I’m using is a new SanDisk Ultra 16GB. Even though 16GB is a lot of storage, it doesn’t get any bigger. Therefore I would limit backup storage on that thumb drive to 8GB. Any more than that, and the thumb drive will get full rather quickly.<\/p>\n

According to Windows, my Work<\/code> folder contains 799MB (0.8GB) of data. That’s far less than my self-imposed 8GB limit, so I’m okay. But more importantly, how did I know that the Work<\/code> folder contains 799GB of data?<\/p>\n

To calculate how much storage you’d be backing up, locate the folder you want to backup. Right-click on the folder and choose Properties. You’ll see the folder’s Properties dialog box, such as the one shown in Figure 1. The Size on Disk value give you an idea of how much information you need to backup.<\/p>\n

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Figure 1. A folder’s properties dialog box.<\/p><\/div>\n

In Figure 1, the Size on Disk value is 799MB. As long as the value you see is less than the half the total capacity of the thumb drive, you’re good to go.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday’s blog post<\/a>, I’ll move on to Step 2, working with the robocopy<\/code>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Backup! It’s so important! I’ve written about it lots. But recently I received an email question, “How can I backup my stuff to a thumb drive?” It’s a decent question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3500"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3580,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500\/revisions\/3580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}