Help with XCOPY for card backup?

[Bob Russell]

I'm trying to use XCOPY from a command line window in WinXP to do backups of my Pocket PC's SD memory card onto my PC hard drive (using a card reader).

The card reader shows the SD card's contents on my K:\ drive.

I want to use a command like...

xcopy K:\*.* C:\CurrentSDCardBackup /s /e /h /v /EXCLUDE:K:\My Documents\Pocket e-Sword\*

to copy everything except the Pocket e-Sword directory because it is static and very large.

(I also want to add additional exception directories if possible, but this single directory will really make the biggest difference for the time it takes to do backups.)

But I can't even get the syntax to work. Can anyone help me out?

Thanks.

[hacker]

How about a real tool... rsync! I'm sure there's a detailed set of docs on how to use it on your platform.

rsync -avzSP <source>

On a real machine (i.e. not Microsoft Windows), you can use it as follows:

 rsync -avzSP user@machine_one:/path/to/file user@machine_two:/destination/dir

I'm a heavy user of rsync, and I'm sure I can help you out with your difficulties. It can do a lot of things, including snapshot backups if you want it to.

rsync is so many orders of magnitude better than any "copy" mechanism. Once you use it, you'll get hooked.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by BobR

xcopy K:\*.* C:\CurrentSDCardBackup /s /e /h /v /EXCLUDE:K:\My Documents\Pocket e-Sword\*

I can't find enough detail on the EXCLUDE switch to say but I have the follow guesses:

1. _Perhaps_ EXCLUDE want "filenames" and not "pathnames". The command's help text uses the term "filenames". You might try omitting the "K:\" in the EXCLUDE section.

2. The last "*" means files without any extension! Is that what you mean or should it be "...\*.*" for "all files regardless of extension"?

good luck

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by dwig

2. The last "*" means files without any extension! Is that what you mean or should it be "...\*.*" for "all files regardless of extension"?

Thanks dwig. I do think it's the filename that's messing me up. Either it doesn't like wildcards, or I'm using them wrong. Hmm maybe even the spaces and dashes are a problem.

I think I'll check out that rsync program that Hacker suggested a try...

You must create a text file and put the excludes in there, then specify the text file in your xcopy command. Very wierd.

e.g.

exclude.txt

\This\
\That\


xcopy *.* g:\ /exclude:exclude.txt