Dummy backup of files/folders/drives
Posted: 16 Feb 2018 23:27
Hi,
This is slightly out of the scope of the nature of XY and yet, it would seem rather apt at doing this....
I've been looking for a program that would do a sort of a backup of selected files/folders/drives where the files would be sort of 'dead' copies of the original i.e. an mp3 file would not play, a photo or video would not be viewable, an .exe would not run, etc...but you could see them in their respective folders, exactly as you would normally and maybe even with a basic property like it's file size could be available but in actual fact, these would just be dummy files probably less than a 1kb in size each.
Why you ask? For backup purposes. Say you have one or more backup drives with Tbs of data on them and wondered if you have already this episode of a series or can't find an important document on your local disk. Rather than having to reconnect an external drive or open a backup software or browse an image file, you could just browse your local dummy backup of the files and quickly get the answer.
And in my case I've made a habit of sharing backup drives of my media files with a friend of mine. I have a backup of his drive and he has one of mine and when we meet every few weeks, we update our respective backups. This means he can browse and enjoy my collection and vice versa.
Having this system would allow me to know what is already on my backup or not for example. Anyway, I'm sure you get the point and since XY already 'has' all the data at it's disposal, I figured it would just be a little added 'trick' to make this possible.
Hope it's of interest!
(don't tell me XY can already do this?! I know I've always been amazed in the past that XY was already capable of doing what I was requesting but this....nah, don't think so).
This is slightly out of the scope of the nature of XY and yet, it would seem rather apt at doing this....
I've been looking for a program that would do a sort of a backup of selected files/folders/drives where the files would be sort of 'dead' copies of the original i.e. an mp3 file would not play, a photo or video would not be viewable, an .exe would not run, etc...but you could see them in their respective folders, exactly as you would normally and maybe even with a basic property like it's file size could be available but in actual fact, these would just be dummy files probably less than a 1kb in size each.
Why you ask? For backup purposes. Say you have one or more backup drives with Tbs of data on them and wondered if you have already this episode of a series or can't find an important document on your local disk. Rather than having to reconnect an external drive or open a backup software or browse an image file, you could just browse your local dummy backup of the files and quickly get the answer.
And in my case I've made a habit of sharing backup drives of my media files with a friend of mine. I have a backup of his drive and he has one of mine and when we meet every few weeks, we update our respective backups. This means he can browse and enjoy my collection and vice versa.
Having this system would allow me to know what is already on my backup or not for example. Anyway, I'm sure you get the point and since XY already 'has' all the data at it's disposal, I figured it would just be a little added 'trick' to make this possible.
Hope it's of interest!
(don't tell me XY can already do this?! I know I've always been amazed in the past that XY was already capable of doing what I was requesting but this....nah, don't think so).
