IT question (slightly OT)

newshound snipped-for-privacy@stevejqr.plus.com> posted

I use Microsoft's xcopy utility in exactly the same way, and it does exactly the same. Just makes the backup take ten times longer. There doesn't seem to be a fix using any of the cmd-line parameters.

Well first look at the why, I guess. Its probably how the date and time are stored in the batch file variables. Brian

Yea like change the clock to something forward or back as required then put it all back afterwards? or know the dates the clocks change and miss the day out? Brian

I remember that too, I shifted to Robocopy (which IIRC is part of Windows now) after seeing a posting somewhere vaguely reputable suggesting it was better. Very similar to use, though.

I find

Chris

Slightly increase the backup interval?

I assume that if you are backing up hourly or less then this might cause an issue on clock change (or perhaps if you are backing up around midnight) but I assume that if you make sure that your backups are more than an hour apart and that they don't take place during the hour back/ forward window then all the files should be accurate?

I can see that files modified just before and during the time going back an hour could have incorrect relative times, but anything modified longer ago shouldn't be picked up.

Would be nice if there was a setting to use UTC date/time instead of GMT/ BST though.

Cheers

Dave R

No, that's not so. I got the same thing as the OP even though I only backup every couple of days, and well outside the clock-change period.

That's what I was looking for in the xcopy parameters, but it's not there.

Change the timing of your backups so that the date stamps will never look older. I would suggest somewhere between 3am and 6am for daily backups or Sunday night/Monday morning for weekly. (3am because it won't happen twice, 6am on the random assumption that you want the backup to be completed before humans start working.)