Network Backups on Windows

Alright, so, I work in a lab with four or five computers all that have lots of pretty important experimental data which can't really be replicated and I feel like nobody backs it up often enough if there's ever another crash (we already had one drive which contained the custom written software specially written for our half a million dollar sputtering system die) and I don't want another repeat of that.

So, I'm looking to have all the computers in my lab automatically back up specified folders onto this giant drive I put into my office computer. Preferably there'd be some way to only copy over new files or ones which have been modified since the last backup, but if that's way more complicated then it's not a huge deal. All computers are running Windows XP Professional (there may be one with Home, I'm not too sure since I don't use it).

I don't mind having to dig through shitloads of Windows settings, though I'm also open to very reliable freeware or even software that needs to be purchased (don't want to pirate it since this is kinda Official Business).

Jam it back in, in the dark.

What about setting up a batch file in the task scheduler?
(Make sure the network shares are mounted as network drives, and that it wont run while the PC is in use.)

@echo off
xcopy c:\path\to\important\shit\*.* x:\path\to\network\backup\*.* /s /e /c /f /h /y
echo done!
exit

Here is an explanation of the xcopy switches: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289483

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Is there a way to set that up to go off, say, every Wednesday night?

Also, do you think the /d:date command could be dynamically done such that it only backs up files made in the past month or so?

Also, "WARNING: Long file names are not retained in MS-DOS mode." worries me since many of our filenames are pretty long. Standard format is usually something like "composition_month_day_year_numberOfRun_conditions _initialsOfWhoDidIt_anythingElse.whatever" so we really need to retain more than the 7-8 or whatever DOS lets you have.


Edit: It look like the built-in Windows Backup utility has most of what I want (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u..._03july14.mspx) including an Incremental Backup setting, but it saves the whole thing as a .bak file instead of just copying the entire directory structure and whatnot.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Yeah, I don't have access to a windows box at the moment, so can't give you step by step directions, but the windows xp task scheduler isn't hard at all to figure out.

The DOS naming wont be an issue, it just means if you run xcopy in a pure dos environment (aka not the windows xp command prompt.) that the names will be shortened to the dos 8.3 specs.

As for the /d switch, I'm sure there is some way to use it, but I would have to experiment and as I said I don't have access to a windows system at the moment.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Anyone else here have ideas? I thought we had a bunch of IT networking people on the boards.

I was speaking idiomatically.

My dad uses xxcopy for his mp3 collection that is mirrored between two computers. It works pretty much just like xcopy, but has a lot more functions, and is meant to actually compete with Microsoft's Robocopy (which they eventually wrote a GUI for.)

He ended up writing a batch file that handled the creation of temporary network drives, then copies all the new and changed files from one computer to the other, using xxcopy. I can't remember if he has it run automatically or manually, but the task manager in Windows

I believe you have to be careful with some of the command switches, because if you aren't careful, it can be destructive if not done right (I believe it can do a directory comparison, which will delete what is in the destination that isn't in the source, and if you switch the destination and the source, you'll be deleting the source files!) But in your case, I think you'll be sticking to the /clone switch, which will clone (duh,) all of the files in the source directory to the destination.

You'd have to pay for it, since it would technically be used to commercial use, but you can test it out yourself for free.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?