Question

I’m trying to do a quick and simple game backup script and it’s not working for me. Here’s what I have.

   @echo off

:main

RD /S /Q "C:\Users\Citadel\Desktop\Minecraft_Backups"

mkdir "C:\Users\Citadel\Desktop\Minecraft_Backups\%date% - %time%"

XCOPY "C:\Users\Citadel\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves" "C:\Users\Citadel\Desktop\Minecraft_Backups\%date% - %time%" /D /E /C /R /I /K /Y

echo %date% - %time% - Backup Complete >> log.txt

PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 900000 >NUL

goto main

Honestly the mkdir command was a shot in the dark, but nothing so far has worked so I tried it.

Answer 1

The problem is that %date% and %time% contain special characters that can’t be used in directory names. Try this at the top of your script:

for /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set mydate=%%c-%%a-%%b)
for /f "tokens=1-2 delims=/:" %%a in ('time /t') do (set mytime=%%a%%b)

Or if you prefer 24-hour time, change the second line to:

for /f "tokens=1-2 delims=/:" %%a in ("%TIME%") do (set mytime=%%a%%b)

And then use %mydate%_%mytime% in place of %date% %time%.

Note that this may have regional issues, but if you confirm it working for your machine, for local backups it will always be fine.