I have created this script which works great however even though it does work it produces a finder time out error. I am trying to copy my user folder to a firewire drive every so often (30GB). The script runs and copies all the files however after about 2 minutes I get a finder error. The copy still goes but how do I get rid of the time out error. Is there a better way to do what I am trying to do???
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set DateStamp to do shell script “date +‘backup’_%m%d%y”
set SourceFolder to “hurriKane3:Users:smk:” – Source Folder
set DestinationFolder to “FireWire 160 GB:” – Destination Folder
tell application “Finder”
make new folder at DestinationFolder with properties {name:DateStamp}
set FinalFolder to DestinationFolder & DateStamp as alias
tell application “Finder” to open FinalFolder
move (folders in folder SourceFolder) to FinalFolder replacing yes
move (files in folder SourceFolder) to FinalFolder replacing yes
end tell
If you don’t mind waiting for the Finder, you can place the Finder tell block in a timeout block
with timeout of *some sufficiently long integer number of seconds*
tell Finder
-- your code
end tell
end timeout
The timeout block will occupy the Finder for as long as you specify, that is, you won’t be able to do anything else in the Finder in the meantime.
Or you could go to Macupdate and search on “backup” for any number of good, cheap backup programs. If you’re using Tiger, make sure the program is compatible, some are broken in Tiger.
One point that may not be too clear in all this is that, even if you set a timeout period way longer than required, it will still be regarded (to all intents and purposes) as “however long it takes”. Once the required operation is complete, the script will finish as normal (in other words, it won’t continue to wait for the specified timeout).
Incidentally, it’s not really necessary to move files and folders separately, since the whole job should be possible in a single hit:
set s to "hurriKane3:Users:smk:"
set t to "FireWire 160 GB:"
set d to do shell script "date +'backup'_%m%d%y"
with timeout of weeks seconds
tell application "Finder" to move folder s's items to (make new folder at t with properties {name:d})
end timeout