Need help creating a backup directory tree

[dreammaker888]

I want to write a routine to backup my laptop into an external drive.

One of my directory has subdirectories within subdirectories. Some is one one deep but some are 2, 3 or 4 deep.

I am having trouble creating a routine that would drill down to every subdirectory automatically and back up the files in there.

Can someone help please?

 

[dilettante]

Why not just use the XCopy command?

 

[dreammaker888]

I am a little rusty with my dos command. Can you elaborate on how you would use the Xcopy command in vb.

Do you mean you create a batch file and then use the shell keyword to execute it?

Thanks.

 

[waytech2003]

Try this. It will copy /hidden file too.

To see any options that you can use, open a command window and enter "Xcopy /?" without the quotes

Shell "XCopy *.* " & DestinationDirectory & " /h

 

[dreammaker888]

OK, looked up the syntax in Google.
Was able to type the following in the command line and run successfully.

Xcopy "C:\Documents and Settings\Alex me\My Documents\VBGames" E:\LapTop1 /s

The source directory is C:\Documents and Settings\Alex Lau\My Documents\VBGames

The destination is E:\LapTop1

But when I do it in VB Debug the following:

Shell(XCopy "C:\Documents and Settings\Alex Lau\My Documents\VBGames" E:\LapTop1 /S)

I got error: Compile Error, Expected list separator or )

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

fun

 

[waytech2003]

Try

Shell "XCopy 'C:\Documents and Settings\Alex Lau\My Documents\VBGames' 'E:\LapTop1' /S "

 

[xwb]

Will it take single quotes? If it does, than I've learnt something new today that I'll try out some other day. If it doesn't try

Shell "xcopy ""C:\Documents and Settings\Alex Lau\My Documents\VBGames"" ""E:\Laptop1"" /S"

If that fails, use dir /x on C drive to find out what the 8.3 name is. Probably something like Docume~1. Then go into C:\DOCUME~1 and do another dir /x to find out what the 8.3 name is for Alex Lau. Probably something like AlexLa~1. And do the same for my documents and any other directory that has either got more than 8 characters or has embedded spaces.

<small rant>GNNN why did microsoft allow users to put spaces in their filenames and directory names</small rant>

You will end up with something like

Shell "xcopy c:\docume~1\alexla~1\mydocu~1\vbgames e:\laptop1 /s"

 

[strongm]

>GNNN why did microsoft allow users to put spaces in their filenames and directory names

Foolishly copying Unix ...

 

[dreammaker888]

Both the following works.

Shell "xcopy ""C:\Documents and Settings\Alex Lau\My Documents\VBGames"" ""E:\Laptop1"" /S"

Shell "xcopy c:\docume~1\alexla~1\mydocu~1\vbgames e:\laptop1 /s"

I like the first better because I can get it from Dirlistbox.

Thanks.

Alex

 

[BobRodes]

So, here's what's going on and it can be confusing. The shell command accepts a string. The string, as you know, is enclosed in quotes. If you want to have a quote in a string, you have to double it. E. g. if you want to take this string

I said "hello", and continued on.

and, say, assign it to the string variable x$, you would do this:

x$ = "I said ""hello"", and continued on."

As you can see, this principle can make for some degree of complexity when working with strings that themselves contain quotation marks.

Bob

 

[dreammaker888]

The following code DID the job.

Shell "xcopy ""C:\Documents and Settings\Alex Lau\My Documents\VBGames"" ""E:\Laptop1"" /S"

However, I need to set up the source and destination as parameters and pass them along to the execution.

The following is the code I tried:

s = "C:\Documents and Settings\Alex Lau\My Documents\VBGames"
d = "E:\Laptop1"

a = """" & "xcopy " & """""" & s & """""" & " " & """""" & d & """""" & " /S" & """"

Shell a

When do debug.print a, it will give me:

"xcopy ""C:\Documents and Settings\Alex Lau\My Documents\VBGames"" ""E:\Laptop1"" /S"

But when

Shell a

is executed, it doesn't do anything, and doesn't give me error.

Can you help?

Thanks.

Alex

 

[strongm]

You need debug.print a to produce:

xcopy ""C:\Documents and Settings\Alex Lau\My Documents\VBGames"" ""E:\Laptop1"" /S

or even

xcopy ""C:\Documents and Settings\Alex Lau\My Documents\VBGames"" E:\Laptop1 /S

Given that you've been shown how to include (or not) quotes within a string, I'll leave it to you to figure out the necessary construct to build a correctly.

 

[BobRodes]

You're confusing literal quotes with quotes used to denote a string that is being assigned to a variable. Think about this:

dim x as string
x = "Hello"
msgbox x

You don't need to make sure that the word hello is enclosed in an extra set of literal quotes when you pass the x variable to the msgbox function, do you? That's analogous to what you're doing in your example. Shell needs a string. You can either say shell "some string" or set a variable (say x) to "some string" and say shell x. You don't need to make sure that what you pass as x is further enclosed in another set of literal quotes. You only need literal quotes if they are actually part of the string you pass.

 

[dreammaker888]

The quote was getting a little too complicated. Instead, I created a batch file like this:

Echo off
XCopy %1 %2 %3

A lot easier to pass parameters to the batch file.

I have another queston about XCOPY.

Can you use the /EXCLUDE:file parameter to exclude a sub-directory, or it only applies to specific files?

Two very large sub-directories: My Pictures and My Musics is embedded in the My Documents directory. I'd like to bed up My Documents and all other sub-directores like My Web, but exclude My Pictures and My Musics which are very large, but infrequently updated.

Do you know how to do it in one pass?

Alex

 

[BobRodes]

<Can you use the /EXCLUDE:file parameter to exclude a sub-directory, or it only applies to specific files?

Yes and no. I suggest you open up a command window and type "help xcopy". You'll find (as I did) that while the parameter must refer to a file (or a concatenated list of files), it must also refer to a text file. The text file must contain a list of the files and/or directories to be excluded from the copy. So, you can do what you want to do by listing your my pictures and my music directories in a text file, and passing that text file name as a parameter to the exclude switch.

 

[dreammaker888]

Oop!I didn't realize you have to put the file names and directories in a text file.

I'll give it a try to night.

Thanks.

 

[BobRodes]

Well, I didn't either, until I looked it up! What was stopping you?