On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 11:19 PM, Greg Keogh <g...@mira.net> wrote: > >I try to keep it simple. I use the old XCopy to copy what is important to > external hard drives (2 Copies) and keeping it safe. > > > > Don’t use xcopy, use robocopy. > > > > SERIOUS WARNING: > > > > My wife ran a batch file I created for her with an xcopy /S /D for almost a > year to backup new/modified files to a removable HDD. By pure accident we > discovered that it was failing prematurely with a weird DOS command “out of > memory” kind of error (I can’t remember the exact error text) due to the > path lengths being longer than 255 characters. So it turns out her backups > were actually incomplete, but mercifully we didn’t suffer any ill effects. > > > > Had there been a pause command in the batch file we might have noticed, but > there wasn’t. So I replaced it with robocopy /MIR and I feel a bit more > confident now. Remember Murphy’s law, then remember O’Toole’s commentary on > Murphy’s law. > > @echo off
bit you. Also not checking errorlevel. But it's downright ugly handling all of that in batch files. And even robocopy doesn't handle open files. (ref to Shadow copy?) -- Meski "Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. Sure, you'll get it, but it's going to be rough" - Adam Hills
