Selective backup

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
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#1

Hello!

Sorry if this has been posted before, I searched but couldnt find anything with what I needed.

I have an Xserve at work running 10.2.8. I have an external backup drive for almost offsite backup. So each night I have to manually copy over the Users folder onto this backup, which takes about 4-5 hours. This doesnt do my sanity or the HD much good, so I was looking into scripting.

Is there a way to tell Finder to only copy across new or modified files/folders? This would mean that backing up would take much less time.

set folderToBackup to alias "disk1:folder:"
set destinationFolder to alias "disk2:folder:"

tell application "Finder" to duplicate folderToBackup to destinationFolder replacing yes

Is there something I could replace “replacing yes” with?

Thanks for any suggestions…

#2

I’m sure there is a *nix command able to do it. Meanwhile you could ask Satimage Team about its Satimage Osax “backup” command support@satimage-software.com, I know there is a “synchronize” option, but I’m not sure it will take in consideration the modification date…
It could be done using vanilla AppleScript, but that is the long way (in terms of coding). Perhaps you can take a look to ScriptBuilders… Perhaps the beast is already done… http://scriptbuilders.net/

#3

I realize this might be late but I have been looking into this also, try these:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/rsyncx.html

rsync is on your disk now. Make sure it is the one for OSX file systems as is described at the second site.

Tony

#4

Better late than never! Thanks for your help.