No, briefcase does not update upon startup, or even automatically, unless you set it up to do so.
You are correct that if I lose a source file and then update the briefcase, then the update will delete the associated file in the briefcase. However, I initiate the update myself, and the update process also tells me everything it is going to do and asks me whether I wish to continue. If I see that it intends to delete a file, I can decide whether that is consistent with my expectations and either continue or bail out. In my view, that gives me enough of a margin of error. I also find the synchronization very helpful, particularly when I am renaming and reorganizing files, as those changes are reflected in the briefcase upon update. But you seem to be looking for a simple automated copy function. Just pick one of the suggestions and try it out. By the way, many of the tools people are citing would work the same way as briefcase if you set them up to "mirror" or "synchronize." Some people have said they do this with automated scripts, which I think is pretty risky for just the reason you cited. My music sits on an Infrant NAS in RAID 0, so I already have a "mirroring" solution which will protect me from a disk failure. I set up the briefcase on another disk on the network, and I am very careful when I update it. This provides some additional protection from bugs, viruses, and my own stupidity, unless that stupidity includes updating the briefcase without being careful, as you have pointed out. Every backup scheme has to deal with this in one way or another. Even if you keep many generations of full backups, you can still get into a situation where a problem was introduced 5 days ago, you did not catch it until today, but you did a significant amount of work yesterday. If you restore the backup from before the problem you no longer have the problem, but you lose all the work you did yesterday. If you stay where you are and do not restore a backup, you do not have to repeat yesterday's work, but you do have to figure out how to fix the problem some other way. Either approach can be the better one, depending upon the specifics of the circumstances. I am in no way saying that briefcase is a great tool for backups, merely that if you are on Windows you already have it, and that what it provides it provides pretty well. YMMV dangerous_dom Wrote: > NO! Correct me if i am wrong, but if you lost some of your master files > and the briefcase gets updated it will delete the copies in the > briefcase! And i think briefcase updates on start up. So, you lose your > files somehow and then your PC reboots. Boom, back up gone :( > > Briefcase is a synchronization solution for working documents, not a > backup solution. > > Right, this is starting to do my head in now. I just can't find the > solution that is _just_ right for me. But i think with a bit of playing > around, Robocopy will do what i want. > > What i want is this; > Automated copying of new/modified files to my second HDD. If i delete > my master files, i dont want my backup files deleted. However, i do > want my _modified_ files copying over. Can robocopy do this? -- jeffmeh ------------------------------------------------------------------------ jeffmeh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3986 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=22161 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
