This response is excessively long, so I have broken it up into what I hope are digestible portions. I anticipate kind criticism from other Robocopy users.
1SS>>> I have the U plugged in "permanently" to my computer (I know, I know, if I get a virus that wipes out my computer it'll copy over to all my files...haven't sorted out this yet). It gets backed up each night using the command below.
If you were asking for my advice, I’d allow a backup drive to be plugged in, but ONLY while you are backing up or copying files. My backups, like my data partitions, are encrypted. As soon as I have recovered the file(s) I want, I dismount and unplug the drives. The next time I rise from my desk, the drive goes back into the fire-resistant safe.
You are using a fire-resistant safe, aren’t you?
1SS>>> The O is stored at work, and brought home once a week. It is then, along with the P, backed up using the same commands.
Excellent! I lived for years under the flight path to two of Toronto’s runways. I should have stored my backups at my accountant’s office, a mile away to the East of me.
1SS>>> So the O (sitting at work in case the house burns down) and the P (sitting at home in case the house doesn't burn down) would be missing at most a week of stuff. The U would be missing at most a day.
Alright. So the U is the daily backup; the O and P are the weekly backups. Correct? NO backup should EVER be stored in the same room as the computer. I learned this in Newcastle NSW back in 1968.
1SS>>> My PC (desktop) has a partition on its drive so C holds the windows files and E is the one that holds my files. So it's essentially
Backups are, therefore, from E to U and then from U on to O and P. Have I got that right? What follows is based on my understanding.
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robocopy "E:\Documents" "U:\Documents" /MIR /FFT /R:3 /W:10 /Z /NP /NDL
robocopy "E:\Music" "U:\Music" /MIR /FFT /R:3 /W:10 /Z /NP /NDL
robocopy "E:\Pictures" "U:\Pictures" /MIR /FFT /R:3 /W:10 /Z /NP /NDL
robocopy "E:\Videos" "U:\Videos" /MIR /FFT /R:3 /W:10 /Z /NP /NDL
Your daily backup can/should be condensed to a single command as follows:-
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robocopy E:\ U:\ /MIR /FFT /R:3 /W:10 /Z /NP /NDL
I removed the quotes; quotes are useful if/when there are spaces within a path, but since there are no paths, you won’t need quotes, right?
I removed the paths because you cannot honestly tell me that in your future you will not/never have other folders to be backed up. So just backup the entire data partition E: to the backup drives(1)
/MIR A file-for-file mirror image is a good idea, but I make that ONLY after I have accumulated the daily backup drive to the weekly backup drive. Once that is done, my daily backup drive is reset to be a mirror image of the data drive so that IF I need to restore the data partition it has never more than a week of clutter. This is what you are doing (somewhere I think), so the concept of /MIR is not foreign to you. Yes. I make TWO RoboCopy each Sunday night; one is the regular daily backup of new or changed files; the second is the /MIR once the daily backup is backed up to the weekly.
/FFT “Assume FAT File Times (2-second granularity).” Never heard of it (grin), but why are you concerned with time? I set my backups running and then wander off to pour another mug of tea. When I return the backup is completed.
/R:3 Retries. Why? Robocopy is being used for backups, right? If you anticipate retries perhaps you should be replacing that backup drive (or the data drive )
/W:0 Wait-between-retries: If you aren’t using retries, then you won’t need wait-times, right?
/Z Restartable copies? Why? I think that an IT guy backing up a LAN might be interested in restartable backups, but an individual home-operator? Apart from which “with /Z, failed copies will usually restart from” how are you detecting that your RoboCopy run failed, and if you aren’t detecting it, why bother with restartable?
/NP “use the /NP switch to suppress the display of progress information.” Why suppress the data? If you are off pouring a mug of tea, you won’t see it anyway, and if your logging data goes to CON (your screen) it is too fast to read, and if you are sending logging data to a file (which I do), then searching the file is much more efficient than staring, now that we have computers, yes?
/NDL “/NDL (No Directory List) suppresses output of the directory list. … so that problems can be pinpointed” I am not clear on this. Why suppress data at all? We have computers to process (sort, filter etc) data. But on top of that, how are you at pinpointing problems with RoboCopying?
Now I’m not being just my normal curmudgeonly self here, and I thank you for introducing me to several parameters of RoboCopy that, in 20? Years I’d not bothered to read. I have seen your “after seeing it on some forum somewhere years ago. Clearly, that's the extent of my research skills these days”, and I really do understand how we grab at responses on forums and run with them; done that all my life; and you are now doing it again!”.
(continued in next post)