Batching: Reading and writing files

[ozgeek]

Hi, I have some questions regarding Windows XP batch files. I have a batch file that backs up all my data to another drive (J)

1. I would like it to record the time and date that the batch starts to backup and time and date that the backup completes.

I was thinking that to get it to write STARTED: date and time and then FINISHED: date and time to a log file and then display this data at the end of the backup in the command window like Backup Started: Date/Time and Finished: Date/Time. Can this be achieved? How.

At this moment I could only know about showing Date and Time when it was finished by using the Date and Time commands.

2. I have scheduled this backup file to run at 8pm on Fridays while I am out at the pub. When I come back, I see it shows the date and time and that is the time it started, 8:00:00 pm. I check the backed up files and they are the old data so it hasn't been backed up. When I manually run the file, the backup runs as supposedly. Why is this?

I am trying to automate backups of my Documents and my program settings. See attached file to see what I mean. :)

[kjordan2001]

1. %DATE% and %TIME% will give you the date and time. You can set a variable with the current date using: set currdate = %DATE%

You can output to a file using > Ouputfile and >> Outputfile. > will overwrite and >> appends.

2. I'm not sure. Take @echo off out and see if there's errors.

[cpugeniusmv]

how's this?

cls
@ECHO OFF
TITLE Weekly Backup Procedure
set starttime=%date% %time%
ECHO.
ECHO Backing up your current My Documents...
xcopy "%documents%" "J:\Jason\My Documents\" /e /q
cls
ECHO.
ECHO Backing up your current My Pictures folder...
xcopy "%pictures%" "J:\Jason\My Documents\My Pictures\" /e /q
cls
ECHO.
ECHO Backing up your current My Videos folder...
xcopy "%videos%" "J:\Jason\My Documents\My Videos\" /e /q
cls
ECHO.
ECHO Backing up your current My Music folder...
xcopy "%music%" "J:\Jason\My Documents\My Music\" /e /q
cls
ECHO.
ECHO Backing up your Internet Favourites folder...
xcopy "%userprofile%\Favorites\" /q /e
cls
ECHO.
ECHO Backing up your Mozilla Firefox data files...
xcopy "%userprofile%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox" "J:\Jason\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\" /e /q /H /y
ECHO.
ECHO Backing up your Mozilla Thunderbird data files...
xcopy "%userprofile%\Application Data\Thunderbird" "J:\Jason\Application Data\Thunderbird\" /e /q /H /y
cls
ECHO.
ECHO Awaiting user input. Press a key...
pause > nul
cls
ECHO.
ECHO Backup started: %starttime%
ECHO.
ECHO Backup completed: %date% %time%
ECHO.
ECHO Press any key to close Backup.
@pause
exit

note: %documents%, %pictures%, %videos%, and %music% are not variables unless you have set them in the Environmental Variables section of the System Control Panel...alternatively, you can set them for just this batch session like so:

set documents="C:\My Documents"

and then whenever %documents% is referred to, you get whatever you set it to. that will need to be done before any references to any of the 'invalid' variables are called.