Question

I have a virtual hard disk .vhd file that I would like to backup on a daily basis by clicking on a shortcut on my Windows Vista laptop. I wrote a half-hazard batch script file (BACKUP.BAT) which accomplishes the job, where it open the cmd window and copies the file to the flash drive, but I would like to mimic (macro) the way the copying is displayed when you manually drag and drop the file into the flash drive in my computer. Another problem is that depending on what computer this is done, the USB flash drive could have drive E: assigned to it (WinXP) and on other computers (Vista/7) it could be drive F:. (There doesnt seem to be a way to statically assign a fixed drive letter to the USB flash drive when it is inserted into the USB port.)

Answer 1

I would set the volume name of the disc, and examine all connected drives and find the drive with that volume name. Here’s how I do it in PowerShell:

param([parameter(mandatory=$true)]$VolumeName,
      [parameter(mandatory=$true)]$SrcDir)

# find connected backup drive:
$backupDrive = $null
get-wmiobject win32_logicaldisk | % {
    if ($_.VolumeName -eq $VolumeName) {
        $backupDrive = $_.DeviceID
    }
}
if ($backupDrive -eq $null) {
    throw "$VolumeName drive not found!"
}

# mirror 
$backupPath = $backupDrive + "\"
& robocopy.exe $SrcDir $backupPath /MIR /Z