Fast, Easy Backups
For Win98 / ME / NT / 2K / XP
Copyright © 1997-2005 Fred Langa/ Langa Consulting LLC. All worldwide rights reserved.
11) FRED’S FREE LARGE-PARTITION
BACKUP-MANAGEMENT SCRIPT
Although you can use Windows’ built-in Task Scheduler to automate many backup tasks (NTBackup, for example, or Drive Image both integrate with Task Scheduler automatically), Windows provides no predetermined way to automate other steps.
For example, every time you run a preset or automatic backup job, the backup file ends up with the same name. On its own, Windows will offer to append backups with the same name one to another, which results in gigantic, unwieldy backup files. Wouldn’t it be better if each backup could automatically get its own unique name, preferably date-based, for easy tracking?
Further, some backup tools don’t use data-compression unless they’re writing to (say) tape. Make a backup to a hard drive partition and the resulting file can be very large.
So, I developed a way to give each newly-created backup file a unique, date-oriented name, and to auto-compress the backup file into a space-efficient, password-protected Zip file:
As my gift to you, I’m pleased to offer you two FREE versions of this script to help you automate management of your backups.
“ZipIt” comes in two flavors: One for Win9x/ME (ZipIt_98) and one for WinNT/2K/XP (ZipIt_XP). Both batch scripts look for a backup file in a pre-established location and then WinZip-compresses it (using maximum compression) into a password protected zip file named in a date-based format (yyyymmdd.zip or yy-mm-dd.zip).
ZipIt’s defaults are generic. As-is, ZipIt has no way to know what specific backup tool you’ll use, what precise name you’ll give your backups, exactly where you’ll put them on your PC, and so on. To use ZipIt, you must modify it (it’s easy!) to tell it these things.
You just use NotePad (or a similar simple text editor) to open ZipIt, to read the embedded comments inside the file, and to follow the clear directions there to make whatever modifications you need or want.
For example, The Win9x version of ZipIt assumes your backups are named “auto_backup.qic.” The “auto_backup” name is arbitrary, and if you want to call your backups something else, you’d need to edit ZipIt to replace every instance of "auto_backup" with whatever your backup file will be named. Likewise, the “.qic” file extension is what’s produced automatically by MSBackup, Win9x/ME’s built-in backup tool. If you use a different tool, you’d need to replace each reference to “.qic” inside ZipIt with whatever file extension your backup tool produces. See? That’s not hard.
(By the way: If you’re new to batch files, check out http://content.techweb.com/winmag/columns/explorer/2000/21.htm . It either directly contains everything you need to know about working with batch files, or has pointers to other sites that will tell you all you need to know.)
Similarly, the WinNT/2K/XP version of ZipIt assumes your backups are named “auto_backup.bkf.” Again, the “auto_backup” name is arbitrary, and if you call your backups something else, you’d edit ZipIt to replace every instance of "auto_backup" with whatever your backup file is named. Likewise, the “.bkf” file extension is what’s produced automatically by NTBackup, WinNT/2K/XP’s built-in backup tool. If you use a different tool, you’d need to replace the “.bkf” extensions with whatever file extension your backup tool produces.
Further, as is clearly explained inside the actual ZipIt files, the script is written to operate on backup files placed in the “D:\backups\” folder/directory. If your backups are in a different location, you’d simply follow the directions inside the ZipIt file to edit the ZipIt script to reflect where your files actually reside.
Your choice of compression tool also affects how ZipIt works. As-written, ZipIt assumes you’re using WinZip ( http://www.winzip.com ) and WinZip’s free command-line line add-on ( http://www.winzip.com/wzcline.htm ). If you prefer to use a different file compressor--- or to turn off file compression altogether--- just follow the embedded instructions inside ZipIt to add or deactivate the commands appropriate to your file compression tool.
Finally, although the date-based renaming methods I used were as general as I could make them (and they should work for most users), they may need adjustment in some cases. Because NT/2K/XP has better built-in date-scripting routines, that version of ZipIt is actually a little more flexible than the other: Its date-renaming routine is self-contained, and allows for up to 5 automatically-renamed backups each day. See the actual ZipIt_XP file for more info.
DOS-based versions of Windows--- Win9x/ME--- have less powerful batch file date routines: The simplest solution I could find to allow easy date-based renaming of your backups was to include a tiny freeware program called WMFREN along with ZipIt itself: You place WMFREN in the same directory as your backups, and ZipIt will automatically use WMFREN to assist in renaming your files. However, because of the limitations of DOS, ZipIt_98 (as-written) can only handle one date-renamed backup per day. You’ll need to modify the file yourself if you want it to handle more than one backup per day, or if you want to use a different file-renaming method. See the ZipIt_98 file for more info.
Next: ESSENTIAL INFO BEFORE DOWNLOADING,
and the download links
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