{"id":1358,"date":"2011-11-09T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/search-results"},"modified":"2011-11-08T21:35:37","modified_gmt":"2011-11-08T21:35:37","slug":"souping-up-synctoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/11\/souping-up-synctoy.htm","title":{"rendered":"Souping up SyncToy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I used to back up my work PC to a set of Virtual Hard Disk (.VHD) files until one day I needed to recover from a failure, and I found that the hard drive encryption software we use prevented me from running a restore. That forced me to find another solution and one of my ReadyNAS devices (sadly not the one that recently suffered two disk failures on the same RAID 1 volume, taking with it a big chunk of my data) is now dedicated to backing up my work PC, with a regular file copy taking place.<\/p>\n<p>I have a drive mapped to a share on the NAS and the command line version of Microsoft&#8217;s SyncToy tool (<code>synctoycmd.exe<\/code>) is set to run as a scheduled task every evening at 10pm. Then, at 11pm, the NAS powers down until 8am the next day. The idea is that, as long as my PC is connected to my home network, it backs up all of the important files, at a time by which I <em>should<\/em> have stopped working.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately I&#8217;m not convinced that it&#8217;s working as it should be &#8211; just because the Windows 7 Task Scheduler tells me that the task completed doesn&#8217;t mean that SyncToy ran successfully (incidentally, <a href=\"http:\/\/social.microsoft.com\/Forums\/is\/synctoy\/thread\/f702a447-bc1f-4afb-a34b-c095931fbe32\">if you are having problems with SyncToy on Windows 7, this thread might help<\/a>). \u00a0I was googling for a solution and came across <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geekzone.co.nz\/forums.asp?forumid=84&amp;topicid=57743\">eXDee&#8217;s batch files<\/a> (sometimes the old ways are the best) to check for network connectivity, presence of the appropriate volume and then run <code>synctoycmd.exe<\/code>, recording a log file on the way. Bingo.<\/p>\n<p>So, here are my versions (only minor updates from eXDee&#8217;s originals), called each night from Task Scheduler and a simple check of the lastsync.log file should tell me whether the backup worked or not.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, don&#8217;t be fooled (as I was) by the <code>synctoycmd.exe<\/code> output that says it saved time by not copying any files. That&#8217;s the output from the preview run and there is a long period after this during which there are no status updates whilst the actual file copies take place.<\/p>\n<h3>synctoy.bat<\/h3>\n<p>This is the control file, to be called from Task Scheduler or run manually from the command line:<br \/>\n<dirtycode:noclick>@echo off<br \/>\ntitle SyncToy run in progress&#8230;<br \/>\necho Attempting file sync. Please wait&#8230;<br \/>\nsync.bat >lastsync.log<\/dirtycode><\/p>\n<h3>sync.bat<\/h3>\n<p>This is the file that checks for the presence of my NAS and for a mapped drive before it backs up my data. You&#8217;ll need to subsititue your own IP address but I&#8217;m particularly impressed by eXDee&#8217;s code to look for a TTL rather than a ping success\/failure (smart move). Note I haven&#8217;t mapped a drive if the connection is not there, although that is a possible enhancement:<br \/>\n<dirtycode:noclick>@echo off<br \/>\necho SyncToy Log starting at<br \/>\ntime \/T<br \/>\ndate \/T<br \/>\necho ##############################################<br \/>\necho Checking connection to NAS&#8230;<br \/>\necho ##############################################<br \/>\nPING -n 2 -w 10 192.168.1.14 |find &#8220;TTL=&#8221; &#038;&#038; goto NAS<br \/>\ngoto PINGFAIL<\/p>\n<p>:NAS<br \/>\necho ##############################################<br \/>\necho NAS is online. Checking for share&#8230;<br \/>\nif exist &#8220;F:\\Synced with Company PC\\&#8221; goto SYNC<br \/>\ngoto NASFAIL<\/p>\n<p>:SYNC<br \/>\necho ##############################################<br \/>\necho Drive is mapped. Begin syncing files&#8230;<br \/>\necho ##############################################<br \/>\ncd &#8220;C:\\Program Files\\SyncToy 2.1\\&#8221;<br \/>\nSyncToyCmd.exe -R<br \/>\nif %ERRORLEVEL% == 0 goto SUCCESS<br \/>\ngoto SYNCFAIL<\/p>\n<p>:PINGFAIL<br \/>\necho ##############################################<br \/>\necho NAS not found. Exiting<br \/>\ngoto END<\/p>\n<p>:NASFAIL<br \/>\necho ##############################################<br \/>\necho Share not found. Exiting<br \/>\ngoto END<\/p>\n<p>:SUCCESS<br \/>\necho ##############################################<br \/>\necho Synctoy finished successfully. Exiting<br \/>\ngoto END<\/p>\n<p>:SYNCFAIL<br \/>\necho ##############################################<br \/>\necho Synctoy Failed. Exiting<br \/>\ngoto END<\/p>\n<p>:END<br \/>\necho ##############################################<br \/>\necho Synctoy Log ending at<br \/>\ntime \/T<br \/>\ndate \/T<\/dirtycode><\/p>\n<h3>lastsync.log<\/h3>\n<p>An example of a run (the failures were down to file access, rather than any issue with the scripts):<\/p>\n<p><em>SyncToy Log starting at<br \/>\n21:00<br \/>\n08\/11\/2011<br \/>\n##############################################<br \/>\nChecking connection to NAS&#8230;<br \/>\n##############################################<br \/>\nReply from 192.168.1.14: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64<br \/>\nReply from 192.168.1.14: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=64<br \/>\n##############################################<br \/>\nNAS is online. Checking for share&#8230;<br \/>\n##############################################<br \/>\nDrive is mapped. Begin syncing files&#8230;<br \/>\n##############################################<br \/>\nPreview of Work Folder Backup (C:\\Users\\markw\\Documents\\Work\\, F:\\Synced with company PC\\Work\\) in time 00:03:08:253.<br \/>\nSyncToy action was &#8216;Echo&#8217;<br \/>\nFound 2 actions to perform.<br \/>\nFound 47,158 files that did not require action.<br \/>\nAnalyzed 250.5 files per second.<br \/>\nAvoided copying 135,013,767,205 bytes in 47,158 files.<br \/>\nSaved approximately 03:00:27:00 by not copying any files.<\/p>\n<p>SyncToy run of Work Folder Backup (C:\\Users\\markw\\Documents\\Work\\, F:\\Synced with company PC\\Work\\) completed at 08\/11\/2011 21:03:27.<br \/>\nSyncToy action was &#8216;Echo&#8217;.<br \/>\nSyncToy options were:<br \/>\nActive for run all<br \/>\nAll files included<br \/>\nNo files excluded<br \/>\nDo not check file contents<br \/>\nInclude read-only files<br \/>\nInclude hidden files<br \/>\nInclude system files<br \/>\nBackup older files (send to Recycle Bin)<br \/>\nAll subfolders included<br \/>\nSyncToy run took 00:00:00:610.<br \/>\nCopied 5,932,607,488 bytes in 2 files in 00:00:00:610.<br \/>\nBytes per second 9,725,586,045.9, files per second 3.3.<br \/>\nAvoided copying 135,013,767,205 bytes in 47,158 files that did not require action.<br \/>\nSaved approximately 00:00:13:882 by not copying all files.<br \/>\nWarning: 4 failures occured.<br \/>\nYou can retry by selecting &#8220;Run&#8221; again or select &#8220;Preview&#8221; to see<br \/>\nthe operations that remain to be performed.<\/p>\n<p>The Sync operation completed successfully on folder pair &#8216;Work Folder Backup&#8217; but some files were skipped. Please look at the logs for more details.<br \/>\n##############################################<br \/>\nSynctoy Failed. Exiting<br \/>\n##############################################<br \/>\nSynctoy Log ending at<br \/>\n21:03<br \/>\n08\/11\/2011<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I used to back up my work PC to a set of Virtual Hard Disk (.VHD) files until one day I needed to recover from a failure, and I found that the hard drive encryption software we use prevented me from running a restore. That forced me to find another solution and one of my &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/11\/souping-up-synctoy.htm\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Souping up SyncToy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[218],"tags":[347,346,144,82],"class_list":["post-1358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-batch-files","tag-synctoy","tag-windows-7","tag-scripting"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Souping up SyncToy - markwilson.it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/11\/souping-up-synctoy.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Souping up SyncToy - markwilson.it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I used to back up my work PC to a set of Virtual Hard Disk (.VHD) files until one day I needed to recover from a failure, and I found that the hard drive encryption software we use prevented me from running a restore. That forced me to find another solution and one of my &hellip; Continue reading Souping up SyncToy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/11\/souping-up-synctoy.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"markwilson.it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-11-09T12:00:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Wilson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@markwilsonit\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@markwilsonit\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark Wilson\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2011\\\/11\\\/souping-up-synctoy.htm#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2011\\\/11\\\/souping-up-synctoy.htm\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Mark Wilson\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468\"},\"headline\":\"Souping up SyncToy\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-11-09T12:00:11+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2011\\\/11\\\/souping-up-synctoy.htm\"},\"wordCount\":828,\"commentCount\":4,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468\"},\"keywords\":[\"Batch files\",\"Microsoft SyncToy\",\"Microsoft Windows 7\",\"Scripting\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Technology\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2011\\\/11\\\/souping-up-synctoy.htm#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2011\\\/11\\\/souping-up-synctoy.htm\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2011\\\/11\\\/souping-up-synctoy.htm\",\"name\":\"Souping up SyncToy - markwilson.it\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-11-09T12:00:11+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2011\\\/11\\\/souping-up-synctoy.htm#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2011\\\/11\\\/souping-up-synctoy.htm\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2011\\\/11\\\/souping-up-synctoy.htm#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Souping up SyncToy\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/\",\"name\":\"markwilson.it\",\"description\":\"get-info -class technology | write-output &gt; \\\/dev\\\/web\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":[\"Person\",\"Organization\"],\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468\",\"name\":\"Mark Wilson\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/i0.wp.com\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/uploads\\\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/i0.wp.com\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/uploads\\\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/i0.wp.com\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/uploads\\\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1\",\"width\":800,\"height\":800,\"caption\":\"Mark Wilson\"},\"logo\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/i0.wp.com\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/uploads\\\/image-4.png?fit=800%2C800&ssl=1\"},\"description\":\"A Chartered IT Professional, with recent experience in technology leadership, IT strategy and practice management roles, Mark Wilson is an Enterprise Architect in the Advisory and Management Group at risual. 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Last night I installed it (to make regular backups of my digital photos and music to my new external hard disk) and was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Windows\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Windows","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/windows"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1272,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/11\/access-denied-when-echoing-files-using-synctoy.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1358,"position":1},"title":"Access denied when echoing files using SyncToy","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 10 November 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Whilst Windows Live Mesh and FolderShare provide me with an effective means to keep files and folders in sync, some of my devices do not run Windows or OS X (e.g. my NetGear ReadyNAS) and I've been using the SyncToy v2.0 tool for data that I just want to copy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Windows\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Windows","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/windows"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1300,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/12\/managing-stored-credentials-from-the-windows-command-prompt-using-cmdkey.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1358,"position":2},"title":"Managing stored credentials from the Windows command prompt using cmdkey","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 22 December 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been meaning to blog about a command which is a reasonably recent addition to Windows for a few weeks now - cmdkey.exe (thanks to John Craddock for highlighting this at a recent XTSeminars event). Basically Microsoft's cmdkey, introduced with Windows Server 2003 (and which should not be confused with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Windows Server 2003\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Windows Server 2003","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/windows-server-2003"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":632,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2006\/07\/why-raid-alone-is-not-answer-for.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1358,"position":3},"title":"Why RAID alone is not the answer for backups","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 17 July 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently came across Gina Trapani's article on the importance of backing up (the comments are worth a read too). I hear what she's saying - a couple of years ago I very nearly lost a lot of data when a hard disk died and today I have far more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Storage\"","block_context":{"text":"Storage","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/storage"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":900,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/09\/mounting-virtual-hard-disks-in-windows-vista.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1358,"position":4},"title":"Mounting virtual hard disks in Windows Vista","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Wednesday 12 September 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Microsoft's Virtual PC Guy (Ben Armstrong) wrote a blog post last year about using the VHDMount utility from Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 with a few registry edits to enable right-click mounting\/dismounting of virtual hard disk (.VHD) files. As .VHD files become ever more prevalent, this is a really useful\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Virtual Server\/Hyper-V\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Virtual Server\/Hyper-V","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/hyper-v"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1048,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/04\/moving-virtual-machines-between-disks-in-hyper-v.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1358,"position":5},"title":"Moving virtual machines between disks in Hyper-V","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 14 April 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The trouble with running Microsoft Hyper-V on a notebook PC is that notebook PCs typically don't have large hard disks. Add a few snapshots and a virtual machine (VM) can quickly run into tens or even hundreds of gigabytes and that meant that I needed to move my VMs onto\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Virtual Server\/Hyper-V\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Virtual Server\/Hyper-V","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/hyper-v"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1358"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3151,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions\/3151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}