A few weeks back I wrote about deleting files that are in use

What about copying them so you can back them up?

I found a tool that will do just that.

It is called hobocopy.

Not to be confused with robocopy, hobocopy takes advantage of a system within windows called Volume Shadow Copy. This allows you to ‘shadow’ files so you can back them up, even while they are in use.

Normally this is just used by backup apps, or the
“Previous Versions” feature of windows

To get started, visit the hobocopy download page:

https://github.com/candera/hobocopy/downloads

Just make sure you get the right one. If you have the 32 bit version of Windows 7..then get the 32 bit version.

The three release versions at the bottom of the page are the ones you want to look at.

If you do download the wrong one, most likely it will return an error when trying to use it. This is because it cannot properly hook into the Volume Shadow Copy system.

Now, on to our task. To copy a folder that contains files that are in use, simply call it like this:

hobocopy [source] [dest]

If you want to get some of the incremental copy features that you see in robocopy, you will first need to make a full copy like this:

hobocopy c:\source c:\dest /statefile=inc.state

This will create a file named inc.state that the incremental copy can use to determine what changed.

Once that full copy is complete, you can run an incremental by referencing the same state file:

hobocopy c:\source d:\dest /statefile=inc.state /incremental

Now it will only copy files that have changed.

One word of warning with all of this. Not all ‘files in use’ are equal. It is possible that the file could be quite old if the application using it never releases its lock.

MSSQL database files fit this description. In addition, applications that don’t properly lock and unlock their files may cause you to copy a file that is in a transient state – in other words corrupted.

Make sure you test this out before someone comes to your desk and asks, “Um, do we backup our files?”

The main hobocopy website can be found here:

http://candera.github.com/hobocopy/

If you have ever copied a large number of files on Windows, you know how frustrating it can be.

Sometimes a simple error can cancel a huge job.

Sometimes you might start a copy before leaving the office…only to find out that 10 minutes into it, Windows asks you if you want to replace a file.

Don’t even get me started with the estimated time to complete dialogs – totally worthless.

Found a solution – It is a free tool called TeraCopy.

The part I like about it is that it is lightweight, and it is only for copying files.

Nothing else.

You can easily access it from any folder or file. Right click, and send to TeraCopy…could not be easier:

What if you want to copy your files and then shutdown your system? You can easily tell TeraCopy to do that:

What about those replace or skip dialogs? You tell it what to do – without waiting 5 minutes for it to ask you:

Even better, you can pause, and resume file copies. Can’t tell you how many times I wanted to do this to take the load off the network for a minute or two:

This is an awesome little utility. Works on 2000 through Windows 7 x64.

You can download it from here:

TeraCopy Download Page

Jennifer, sent me a question last week:

Steve,

Jen

Yes, There is a way to do this. Now it is not foolproof, but it will work most of the time.

First, we need our script to close Outlook, that way the PST files will not be in use.

We will accomplish this with a little bit of VB Script:

Set Outlook = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Outlook.Quit
Set Outlook = Nothing


Save this as “CloseOutlook.vbs”

Now, we will use this script, in combination with a bat file. The bat file will run CloseOutlook.vbs, and then copy the PST files.

Most of the time PST files are located in the users AppData folder. We can use an environment variable to find this.

It is called %LOCALAPPDATA%. For our backup, we will copy it to a share named backup, and we will copy it to a folder matching the users name.

The copy command will look like this:

COPY %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Outlook\*.pst \\server\backup\%USERNAME% /y

/y – This allows us to overwrite without being prompted.

So, we have both things that we need. The ability to close Outlook (So the user does not have to remember to do this), and a way to find and copy our PST files.

Here is what the final bat file would look like


cscript.exe CloseOutlook.vbs
COPY %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Outlook\*.pst \\server\backup\%USERNAME% /y
@if errorlevel 1 goto ERROR_HANDLER
@goto SUCCESS
:ERROR_HANDLER
@echo "==================="
@echo "= Backup Failed =
@echo "==================="

:EXIT
pause

I added an error handler, so the user will be notified if the copy could not complete.

Save it as BackupOutlook.bat and throw it on their desktop.

Now your users can backup their PST files – If they remember to do it

I had lunch last week with my good friend Brett. We were talking about synchronizing, and backing up files. I went on a long rant about how much I liked robocopy.

After I finished talking about robocopy, he told me about SyncToy from Microsoft. SyncToy? I had never heard of it.

The one drawback with robocopy is that it is command line only. Sometimes it is nice to just point and click. I never seem to be able to find a simple, but free file sync tool that has a nice GUI interface. From his description, it seemed to fit what I was looking for.

Finally, I took it for a spin today. It has the balance I was looking for between simplicity, and functionality. Best of all it is free.

Let me walk you through it.

Start out by downloading it from Microsoft’s website

When you run it for the first time, you are asked to create a new folder pair. A folder pair is the set of folders you want to sync.

In my case it is a local folder, and a folder on a company file server. If you plan to do a one way copy keep in mind that the folder on your left is your source, and the one on the right is the destination.

Once you pick your folders, you can decided what to do with them.

SyncToy has these options:

Synchronize – New and updated files are copied both ways. Renames and deletes on either side are repeated on the other.

Echo – New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames and deletes on the left are repeated on the right.

Contribute – New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames on the left are repeated on the right. No deletions.

In my case, I want to have a backup of my code so I use “echo”. It will copy everything from my local drive to the server.

Click next, give it a name, and click finish. Now you have a new sync job waiting to be run:

Click run, and the synchronization begins.

That is all there is too it! A little simpler than remembering to type all of the command line options into robocopy.

Is there a free utility that makes your life easier? Send me an email at support@intelliadmin.com so I can tell everyone else.

And if you missed it before, here is the download link from microsoft to get your free copy of SyncToy:

Download SyncToy 2.0

I have almost 4 years worth of emails in a Gmail account. I have tried using other services, and even ran my own email server – but I always find Google calling me back with their top notch spam protection.

The problem with that is…well I have 4 years worth of emails. Many of them contain serial numbers to products, important answers to customer questions, and stuff that is simply not replaceable. I never trust computers when it comes to keeping my data secure. I always assume that today it is here, and tomorrow it could be gone.

Backups are easy when it is your own system, but when you have all of your email on a service like Gmail it makes it more difficult to make it part of a backup procedure. I started to get worried about losing it all, so for a few weeks now I have been trying to use MS Outlook to download it to a local PST using IMAP. The account has over 30,000 messages, and Outlook always dies at about the 12,000 message mark.

After some digging (About 3 seconds on Google) I found a free utility that will backup your entire Gmail account to a folder.

Let me start out by telling you the best things about it:

1. It is free – I would pay for a pro version if it would automate the process for me

2. It can restore a backed up account to a current email account

3. The backup is stored in standard eml format – This means you can open messages using Outlook express.

You can download the latest version from http://www.gmail-backup.com

Backing up is a simple process. You download the program, enter your account info, and press the backup button. (The hosted version of Gmail is supported too)

A single form is displayed when you launch the application:

Enter your login information, and a destination for the backup files. Click on the backup button.

Once it is finished, it organizes the backups by date in the destination folder you selected:

You may notice the 1969, and 1970 folders – those are from a few improperly formatted email messages that have an invalid date stamp…it is not a bug.

You can view any of them using Outlook Express by double clicking on a message:

This is a fantastic utility and I highly recommend it.