Re: Automated backup on Windows external drive

[Patrik Dufresne]

Hello Eric,

For a user friendly approach, you could take a look at Minarca Beta version
that now supports backup on external hard drives.
https://minarca.org/en_CA/blog/minarca-4/discover-the-beta-version-of-minarca-6-109

As you might already know, Minarca makes use of rdiff-backup under the hood
and it's compatible with Windows. The use case you describe is exactly what
I'm trying to cover with this new beta release.


Le lun. 20 mai 2024, à 12 h 45, EricZolf <ewl+rdiffbackup@lavar.de> a
écrit :

> Hi,
>
> based on my below requirements, I've created [1].
> Any feedback from someone more familiar with batch scripting under
> Windows is more than welcome.
>
> Else, regarding the autorun feature, I've given up, my setup sees only
> like this in the root of the drive:
>
> rdiff-backup\rdiff-backup.exe
> backitup.bat
> backitup.txt
> autorun.inf
> rdiff-backup.ico
> BAK__COMPUTERNAME__USERNAME
>
> with autorun.inf reading like this:
>
>
> [Autorun]
> Icon=rdiff-backup.ico
> Label=MyDrive RUN backitup.bat
>
>
> (the label must be 32 characters or less to appear in its entirety)
>
> So the user must still actively start the back-up, but that's probably
> anyway better, even though a more fanciful approach could have been nice
> [2] (if someone understands them).
>
> KR, Eric
>
> PS: if you have other fancy usages of rdiff-backup, don't hesitate to
> share them with the crowd, and/or create a PR accordingly.
>
> [1] https://github.com/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backup/pull/1004/files
> [2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/autorun-cmds
>
> On 17/05/2024 12:29, EricZolf wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > as I offered a laptop to my daughter, I want also to offer her a
> "backup".
> >
> > My idea would be to have an external (SSD/USB) drive with rdiff-backup
> > and a BAT-script on it, which would make sure that, when started, it
> > backs up the current user's directory to a sub-directory of the drive
> > (i.e. the place where the script lies).
> >
> > Extra-points for starting automatically the script when plugging in the
> > external drive (is autostart still a thing in Windows 11? Security-wise
> > not optimal...), and for having a window pop-up as long as the backup
> > runs so that the user knows to not unplug the drive (the CMD terminal
> > would be just fine).
> >
> > Has anybody already implemented something like this and could share the
> > details? Is it at all possible under Windows? I would have written the
> > script in 5min on Linux, but here I'm lazy.
> >
> > Thanks, Eric
> >
> >
>
>
>

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