Backups, Livedrive, FTP and Robocopy

So backups are important….right?  Really important.

If you don’t have backups, then you could easily lose your data. Hard drives will fail…it is not a question of “if”, but “when”.

For myself…I have been using Livedrive for a few years now.  Other than the occasional glitch (nothing major), it has worked well. One feature that doesn’t work well for me is the “Briefcase” – this is supposed to be a Local Drive letter that shows up on your local machine (usually drive L: ) and lets you access your Livedrive through normal Windows means.

I have several problems with it….1) I think I have too many files to let this work effectively and 2) the date/time stamps and 3) the use of *.ld files

1. This one is obvious – I have TB of data and they allow unlimited, so I am going to use it
2. I was using their FTP service to upload the files and as a result all the files are uploaded, but have the wrong date/time stamp in comparison to the originals
3. They only show the *.ld files and not the name of the real file

So…I figured I would use Robocopy (it comes standard with Windows 7 and Server 2008) to keep things in sync. Robocopy allows me to copy only the changed files over to the Livedrive, so it is fast and efficient …but like I said, the date/time stamps are wrong, so Robocopy wants to copy everything over!  Ugh. Plus, it sees the *.ld files as “Extra” on the destination side, so it wants to delete them.

I found a way to fix this and make it work the way it should.

I use their FTP service already, so I grabbed a copy of Webdrive. This program turns a FTP site into a drive letter, but it uses standard FTP commands, so no funny business. Secondly, if you check the reference for Robocopy, you can see some advanced features – specifically, /TimFix, /XO and /XN.

So…to get things in sync, assuming a mapped drive of S: for my server and a W: for my Webdrive, I ran:

robocopy S:\Photos W:\Photos /E /TimFix /XO /XN

This updates all the Timestamps on the destination without actually copying anything over.  /TimFix says: FIX Timestamp on all existing destination files, including skipped files.

Perfect! Now the two systems are in sync and I can use standard Robocopy commands to upload new/changed files to Livedrive:

robocopy S:\Photos W:\Photos /E

This will copy only changed or newer files (including subdirectories) over to my Livedrive.

Thus I have a copy locally and a off-site backup in case something happens.

Jim