Hi all, another OffTopic question from me.

There's a directory in my server (Windows Server 2003) that needs to be periodically backed-up, with ability to restore a snapshot in time.

Since the period is short (every 3 hours), our daily differential backup plan does not suffice.

In addition, the backup *must* be online, i.e. must be quickly restorable. This means that the backup must be stored in the server's hard disk.

I envision a tool that periodically compresses the directory in question to a timestamped compressed file.

Is there a ready-to-deploy tool capable of doing this? Or maybe building a complex AT script?

Thanks for your inputs.

How large is the directory subtree?

How large are the changes per 3 hours?

And by snapshot, do you imply the use of the newish Shadow Copy services, or will the files always be available for read-only use by the backup application?

[combined two posts]

It appears that the Windows 2003 Server feature called "Shadow Copies of Shared Folders" is exactly what you need. If space is an issue, I suspect you can turn on file compression on that volume and disregard the need to create archives.

-brendan

Thanks bhoar. For my need, Shadow Copy is much too complicated to be useful.

FYI, the directory (and its subtree) totals around 100 megabytes or so. Changes are usually small, but affecting many files.

Okay, to make a clearer picture: This directory contains working files for advertisements (graph + text), web graphics, etc. These files are open to all team members, and sometimes we need to easily compare several revisions at the same time (e.g. opening the last edited file with the 3 prior versions).

Anyways, I have settled on this strategy:

- Use a freeware program called DSynchronize (I got it from SnapFiles) running in Service mode to backup the directory every 3 hours. I also configure DSynchronize to create timestamped directories (i.e. embed the ISO-8601 datetime into the backup directory's name).
- Turn on NTFS compression. The compression isn't maximum, but quite enough for our need.

Thanks all!

Even though you found a solution, there is an alternative:

Find a service which can act as a scheduler. Basically, all it needs to do is execute batch files in defined intervalls. Once you found such an app, you can simply do everything else via plain old batch and CLI.

I'm not that much a CLI-fan, but for scripting its unbeatable, especially when combined with a cron-like service.

FYI, Windows NT and later (2000, XP, 2003, Vista) include both the "at" command, similar to cron, and the Scheduled Tasks control panel, both interfaces into the same OS scheduling engine.

I use them to schedule Microsoft's Synctoy for periodic development saves as well as Drive Snapshot <http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/intro.htm> for daily backups.

-brendan