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Number   :  3238
Date     :  2002-12-12
Author   :  Garry Deane
Subject  :  Re: Preserving Generation Backups
Size(KB) :  1


--- In xxcopy@yahoogroups.com, "freedom41ca " 
 wrote:


> The bottom line is that generation back-ups allow you to: 
> 
> 1. create a timestamped record of your changes/modifications
> 2. should a change ever not work out, you can quickly revert back 
to a previous change by going back one generation of your work, or 
two, or three until you get to a point before the problem was created.
> 3. who's to say that your one and only back-up was not corrupted 
during the backup process.

I'm not sure whether xxcopy could handle this (it probably can) but 
it's quite straightforward to do with a bit of batch code. I'll 
assume that you are using NT or higher and that your backups have a 
structure like the following:

d:\backups\
..\20021128\
..\20021129\
..\20021130\
..\20021201\
etc.

That is, the generational backups are named with ISO date stamps. If 
not, you could modify the following to be ordered using the creation 
date instead of the name which should be just as effective.

Your aim is to keep the 10 directories with the most recent dates and 
delete the others. If you use "DIR d:\backups /o-n/b/ad" this will 
list the directories in reverse name order. It's then simply a matter 
of deleting the 11th, 12th etc directories.

@echo off
:: Remove echo {test} below when satisfied that it works as required
for /f "skip=10" %%a in ('dir d:\backup /o-n/b/ad') do (
echo {test} rd %%a /s /q
)

If you are using W98/ME or similar, I'd suggest using a utility like 
LMOD (http://home.mnet-online.de/horst.muc/) to achieve a similar 
result, albeit with the use of a few temporary files.

Garry



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