Thursday 21 August 2008

Automatic USB Stick Backup

A little something i've been meaning to do for a while, automatically backing up my USB stick when i plug it in.

The obvious solution is to create an autorun.inf file on the stick to run a backup script from the device. Autorun is not always available however and I want control over where my data (for the record, encrypted by Truecrypt) is copied.

I have found 'USB Detect and Launch' by Matt Collinge which once installed allows you to run scripts when devices are plugged in, allowing different actions depending on the volume label.
The software is free for personal use or $40 for business use.

1 ) Download & Install tool from >

http://mattcollinge.wordpress.com/software/usb-detect-and-launch/

2 ) I created a directory for my backups >

D:\!USB_BACKUP\R5D4

3 ) I created D:\!\backup-r5d4.cmd (a 1 line backup command) as >

XCOPY %1\*.* D:\!USB_BACKUP\R5D4 /e /i /h /y /d

Usb Detect & Launch Configuration >

4 ) In 'Main Settings' I created one entry.
This runs my backup command whenever it sees a usb stick with a label of R5D4 >

label:R5D4 exec:d:\!\backup-r5d4.cmd %1

5) In 'Main Settings' I changed the poll interval to 60 seconds.


Results :
Bingo! Plugged in my USB drive and up popped the command window which proceeded to copy my files.

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