Copying non contiguous directories in 1 directory hierarchy

[port80]

I often have to backup users documents and setting directories (ie profiles) as part of my job. Can anyone point me in the right direction on an effecient way to do this with XYplorer?

Here's the scenario. I need to copy a users documents and settings user profile to a backup directory. It would be a subset of the entire directory structure. For example. I would copy a users

MyUserid\Cookies
\Desktop
\LocalSettings\ApplicationData
\Apps
\History

(Excluding) \Temp
(Excluding) \TemporaryInternetFiles

\MyDocuments
\MyRecentDocuments

\StartMenu

Excluding any other directories and files in the windows profile.

Can someone tell me the most efficient way to do this? If this is even possible.

Thanks, Alan

[lukescammell]

I don't use the catalogue feature (yet), but I'd imagine it might be able to help you get to these directories very quickly (one at a time) and then you can just use the Backup To command... someone with more catalogue knowledge help out here

[admin]

I often have to backup users documents and setting directories (ie profiles) as part of my job. Can anyone point me in the right direction on an effecient way to do this with XYplorer?

Interesting task!! I'll think about it...

[phatmankerr]

Alan,

Don't want to point you away from XY (my no.1 utility) especially as Don is looking at it for you, but you may want to have a look at Copier (http://www.zgspro.com/) which may allow you to create a profile to do what you want.

Not sure though - I just use it for fairly low level repetitive copying tasks. It's also fairly small so you could lug it round on a floppy or USB drive (or install it on a network share - your call).

Cheers

Andy

[j_c_hallgren]

I also don't wish to point you away from XY, but for that type of backup task on my system, I presently use SyncBack, which has a free vers that may work for you...it's at http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html, and appears to be free for most any usage.

[admin]

I also don't wish to point you away from XY, but...

Hehe, what evil force drives you to do what you do not wish to do?

Before the devil gets another user soul let me announce: Soon, this kind of stuff can be handled via Catalog...

[jacky]

Well, I don't want to point you away from the Catalog (;)) but I'm not really sure how it would really help here

If I get it right, and you know which folders to backup, my first idea would have been to make a search that will find all items to be backedup. That search could then be saved (Template) & whenever you need to do a backup, you could just run the search, select all results & then do a (rich) copy.

If every folder to copy were on the same level using a VF could go faster (no need to search), but that's not the case here so...



On a side note, trying a few things regarding this issue I find myself quite perplex with the way "Check full path" works. Well actually, how does it work??
Cause I wanted to try to do a search and, along with it, use a criteria such as: !D:\Some Folder\*
The point was to find all files but those in that folder. But that doesn't work. And actually:
D:\Folder\* dont work
D*\Folder\* does work. seems we can't use the : here (and not ? either btw, so can't be used really to do want I wanted to do)
And it works, but finds D:\Folder 2\some file.ext as result. Well, I do not see a match here, I mean where's the "\Folder\" part ??

[admin]

Well, I don't want to point you away from the Catalog (;)) but I'm not really sure how it would really help here ...

Not yet! It will be very simple and a first step (actually half the way) towards drop stack! You will be able to feed all items collected inside a category into the Copy, Copy To etc. operations!! How? Simply by context menu of a category which will have "Copy all items" etc. resp. a sub menu "All Items" with commands Copy, Copy To, Backup To ...

On a side note, trying a few things regarding this issue I find myself quite perplex with the way "Check full path" works. Well actually, how does it work??
Cause I wanted to try to do a search and, along with it, use a criteria such as: !D:\Some Folder\*
The point was to find all files but those in that folder. But that doesn't work. And actually:
D:\Folder\* dont work
D*\Folder\* does work. seems we can't use the : here (and not ? either btw, so can't be used really to do want I wanted to do)
And it works, but finds D:\Folder 2\some file.ext as result. Well, I do not see a match here, I mean where's the "\Folder" part ??

Wowee! A bug plus a user error! Here's your error: slashes must be escaped. Let me quote the future history:

Code: Select all

    ! Find Files "Check Full Path" did not always work as expected. 
      Fixed. Note that in the search patterns you have to escape any 
      backslashes "" with backslashes "" (i.e. double them: "\").

But it won't help you now, because it still will not work and the bug fix will come only tomorrow.

[lukescammell]

http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?t=1144

Might this go part way to helping this? I realise that it only works in the one directory as a time, but then you can do something funky like going to the parent of all the marked directories and using the "Backup to" funtion with a "only copy marked" and "preseve file structure" tick box?

I realise this is getting into full backup territory, and maybe evening getting into archiver utility space as well, but frankly, if I can do all of this (kinda like a tar function) with XY, and then just have to compress one directory with my compression utility, that would rock