Hello All, In the past Allie has posted a batch program to completely backup TB registry, program, and mail base files with WinRAR. I never forgot the message. Since I have a HD to ghost images too, I never really investigated further because I felt this was sufficient backup. The only problem is I use WinXP which means it is an all or nothing affair meaning I either ghost the entire image of the partition or boot WinXP with the other partition connected which creates drive dependencies. Since I didn't want to create the drive dependencies I always had a downside to my backup procedure because I would have to restore from the entire backup image. Since the partition I run TB on is primarily a data drive with common message base programs such as TB and Agent, this may not be a good thing when substantial data has changed when I want to keep it.
I couldn't justify the additional cost of purchasing WinRAR when I already had a proven backup procedure. The downside like I've noted is that it was an all or nothing affair. I have been using a FREE compression utility 7-Zip from http://www.7-zip.org/ and also available on SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/ for sometime and have grown accustomed to it. I new it had command line capabilities, but never really explored them and put this task on my ToDo list. Due to another TBBETA member's problem, I decided it was time to explore. I initially had some problems with the syntax and features, but fortunately for me and possibly you the developer, Igor Pavlov, provided some helpful hints which provided the solution. I've been able to use the 'Update' capabilities with command line capabilities of 7-Zip. What this means is backup of my TB registry, TB program directory, & TB Mail base directory is completed in a very short period of time. Depending on how much change has occurred determines the length of time to run. I've ran it several times after downloading messages and each time taking about a minute to two on 501 MB of data. The compression ratio is actually slightly better than WinRar. I downloaded a trial version of WinRar which completed the task in roughly the same time as 7-Zip with a compression ratio of 22.5%, and 7-Zip having a compression ratio of 22.0%. I have successful tested the restore procedure several times without a problem. I WILL be incorporating 7-Zip's command line capabilities into my Task Scheduler to do routine backup of my mail. The batch program is a mirror of Allie's only usng 7-Zip's commands and switches. Things you should note are to put the batch in the root directory of the partition you have TB and Mail base, and you have to use absolute path structure for the directories you are backing up (i.e. leave the drive out of the paths that you are backing up). I would imagine if you have the program and mail base in separate drives, you would probably have to break the batch file into two. I don't have that problem. So if your interested in incorporating the use of 7-Zip into your backup procedures of TB, the batch file I created is below. ----------BEGIN----------> @Echo off Echo ************************************************ Echo * !! Updating Backup Archive of TB-Mail !! * Echo * (Program is X:\TBArchives\tbPgm7z.7z) * Echo * (Mail Base is X:\TBArchives\tbMail7z.7z) * Echo ************************************************ Path C:\Windows;C:\Program Files\7-ZIP regedit /e "x:\TBArchives\tbregNew7.reg" hkey_current_user\software\rit 7za u -ms=off x:\TBArchives\tbPgm7z.7z -up0q0r2x1y2z1w2 "Program Files\The Bat!\*" -r 7za u -ms=off x:\TBArchives\tbMail7z.7z -up0q0r2x1y2z1w2 "AppsBase\MAIL\*" -r <----------END------------- Take care! -- Best regards, Greg Strong TB! v1.63 Beta/11 on Windows XP Service Pack 1 ________________________________________________________ Current beta is 1.63b11 | "Using TBBETA" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
