RichCopy

[CharlyD]

My library is stored on a NAS and served by a UPnP server (Twonky) running on that NAS. My intended backup plan is to backup the library to my PC at least weekly and backup the PC to a removable drive on a longer interval (monthly). Implementation of this plan proved to be far more of a pain than expected, but I finally found a solution.

 

I initially tried the backup software included with my Seagage and WD USB drives. Neither of these packages allowed definition of a network share as the backup source. I next tried the Nero BackItUp software included with the NAS. This package seemed a lot more flexible and complete than what I had tried previously, and I was able to create backups on both my PC and removable storage. When trying to update this backup to include recent purchases, I found that the new files were not being seen at all by BackItUp. BackItUp builds a database of all files in the source and destination on the first backup, and, apparently those are the only files it is concerned with on subsequent backups.

 

While investigating robocopy and its arcane DOS switches, I came across richcopy. Richcopy is a free utility from Microsoft with an intuitive UI and great flexibility. In just a few minutes, I had set up a backup which will analyze the source and destination for any changes, purge any files/folders in the destination which are not present in the source and perform a multi-threaded copy. As freeware, it is not supported and has a few glitches. For the Windows users out there - give it a shot - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.04.utilityspotlight.aspx?pr=blog

 

[BobH]

Good find, thank you.