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.

I have a drive mapped to a share on the NAS and the command line version of Microsoft’s SyncToy tool (synctoycmd.exe) 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 should have stopped working.

Unfortunately I’m not convinced that it’s working as it should be – just because the Windows 7 Task Scheduler tells me that the task completed doesn’t mean that SyncToy ran successfully (incidentally, if you are having problems with SyncToy on Windows 7, this thread might help).  I was googling for a solution and came across eXDee’s batch files (sometimes the old ways are the best) to check for network connectivity, presence of the appropriate volume and then run synctoycmd.exe, recording a log file on the way. Bingo.

So, here are my versions (only minor updates from eXDee’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.

Incidentally, don’t be fooled (as I was) by the synctoycmd.exe output that says it saved time by not copying any files. That’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.

synctoy.bat

This is the control file, to be called from Task Scheduler or run manually from the command line:
@echo off
title SyncToy run in progress…
echo Attempting file sync. Please wait…
sync.bat >lastsync.log

sync.bat

This is the file that checks for the presence of my NAS and for a mapped drive before it backs up my data. You’ll need to subsititue your own IP address but I’m particularly impressed by eXDee’s code to look for a TTL rather than a ping success/failure (smart move). Note I haven’t mapped a drive if the connection is not there, although that is a possible enhancement:
@echo off
echo SyncToy Log starting at
time /T
date /T
echo ##############################################
echo Checking connection to NAS…
echo ##############################################
PING -n 2 -w 10 192.168.1.14 |find “TTL=” && goto NAS
goto PINGFAIL

:NAS
echo ##############################################
echo NAS is online. Checking for share…
if exist “F:\Synced with Company PC\” goto SYNC
goto NASFAIL

:SYNC
echo ##############################################
echo Drive is mapped. Begin syncing files…
echo ##############################################
cd “C:\Program Files\SyncToy 2.1\”
SyncToyCmd.exe -R
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 0 goto SUCCESS
goto SYNCFAIL

:PINGFAIL
echo ##############################################
echo NAS not found. Exiting
goto END

:NASFAIL
echo ##############################################
echo Share not found. Exiting
goto END

:SUCCESS
echo ##############################################
echo Synctoy finished successfully. Exiting
goto END

:SYNCFAIL
echo ##############################################
echo Synctoy Failed. Exiting
goto END

:END
echo ##############################################
echo Synctoy Log ending at
time /T
date /T

lastsync.log

An example of a run (the failures were down to file access, rather than any issue with the scripts):

SyncToy Log starting at
21:00
08/11/2011
##############################################
Checking connection to NAS…
##############################################
Reply from 192.168.1.14: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.14: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=64
##############################################
NAS is online. Checking for share…
##############################################
Drive is mapped. Begin syncing files…
##############################################
Preview of Work Folder Backup (C:\Users\markw\Documents\Work\, F:\Synced with company PC\Work\) in time 00:03:08:253.
SyncToy action was ‘Echo’
Found 2 actions to perform.
Found 47,158 files that did not require action.
Analyzed 250.5 files per second.
Avoided copying 135,013,767,205 bytes in 47,158 files.
Saved approximately 03:00:27:00 by not copying any files.

The Sync operation completed successfully on folder pair ‘Work Folder Backup’ but some files were skipped. Please look at the logs for more details.
##############################################
Synctoy Failed. Exiting
##############################################
Synctoy Log ending at
21:03
08/11/2011