Updating a backup - software?

want to backup my HD to my secondary HD, then have some way of updating my secondary when the primary has changed. Is there any software that does this?

 

There is a rather low-tech way for you to do this. You could use the xcopy command with the /d parameter. For example:

@ECHO OFF
ECHO *
ECHO *
ECHO *
ECHO Backing up MY DOCUMENTS to the Network
echo *
echo Checking Dates on Files .... Please Wait
XCOPY /D C:\MYDOCU~1\*.* M:\mclemojw\MYDOCU~1 /S /E
ECHO *
ECHO *
ECHO *
ECHO Backup is Completed !!!!
ECHO *
ECHO *
call c:\windows\quit.bat

This little file enables one of our clients to backup all files modified
since the previous backup in his My Documents folder to a network drive. Since he prefers to do this at the end of the day and doesn't want to wait around for it to complete, I have this bat file call quit.bat, which consists merely of the line:
C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL.EXE user.exe,exitwindows

 

Another excellent free utility is XXCOPY

With it the syntax is merely:

xxcopy /clone c:\ d:\

Each subsequent usage will incrementally amend the first so it runs very fast after the first usage.

 

Drburdi,
Zephyr is quite right. XXCOPY is much more appopriate and versatile than my silly little batch file with xcopy.

 

I will add a word of caution for those, like me, who are prone to trying things out before reading the instructions fully.

The XXCOPY /CLONE C:\ D:\ command will copy the entire contents of the C drive to the D drive and in the process delete anything found on the target drive (D) that does not exist on the source (C) drive. We have given it the entire drive for its exclusive use. That has some dire implications if you have other files on the target drive.

To avoid this you can use the command:

XXCOPY /CLONE C:\ D:\BACKUP\

and it will not delete any files except those found in the BACKUP directory, or whatever you choose to name it.

The advantage of using the full drive command is in order to produce a drive that could actually be made bootable in case the primary drive failed. If you don't need that capability, I suggest copying to a folder as indicated above.

It has many other switches and I recommend some reading of the help files. There is also a great support forum for XXCOPY on Yahoo that will answer any questions you may have.

NOW, my conscience is clear!