Quick Back Up Of Your Files

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February 14, 2013

Quick Back Up Of Your Files
All the freeware tools that are uploaded in this blog were developed for one main purpose: to make our daily routine easier. Probably one of the most common routine tasks that we have to cope with every day is the back up of our files. If your daily job involves computer use, I am sure that you will understand the importance of backing up your files at least once a week.

The previous days the following question was spinning in my mind: is it possible to automate the daily back up process? My notebook is a little bit old, my external hard disk has not many free disk space, so I was wondering: is it possible to find an efficient way to backing up my files quickly?


Application description

I answered to the previous question with this small application. What it does? Well, in short, the idea can be described in the steps that follow:

  1. Select a folder that contains the files you want to back up (source folder). Usually this is a main folder like “My Work”, “My Documents”, “Downloads” etc.
  2.  Select a folder in which the files will be saved (target folder). This could be a folder in an external hard disk or USB stick.
  3. Pick up a date/time after which you want to back up your files. Note that the application loops through all the files of the source folder and COPIES ONLY the files that are created/modified AFTER the date/time you specified.
  4. Copy the files that meet the date/time criterion.
The application re-creates the folder tree in the target folder. For example if the folder C:UsersΧρήστοςDownloads is the source folder and the folder H:Back Up the target folder, then if the file C:UsersΧρήστοςDownloadsVoltage DropCalculation.xlsm meets the date/time criterion, it will be saved as H:Back UpDownloads 2013-02-14 – 20-29-50Voltage DropCalculation.xlsm.

The VBA code contains some error handling for a) wrong folder paths (source and target), b) invalid characters in file paths and insufficient disk space. If the user enables the check box in the form a log file will be created containing information about the files that were been saved. So, now you have no excuse: within a few seconds you can back up all your essential files.

How to use it

The short video below demonstrates the application in use.

Download it from here

This file can be opened with Office 2007 or newer. Please, enable macros the first time that you run this application.

Page last modified: January 6, 2019

Christos Samaras

Hi, I am Christos, a Mechanical Engineer by profession (Ph.D.) and a Software Developer by obsession (10+ years of experience)! I founded this site back in 2011 intending to provide solutions to various engineering and programming problems.

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