Simple File backup with Robocopy

One of the main issues when using any computer is regular backup of your precious data to protect against corruption and accidental deletion. Microsoft has always provided their "Windows Backup" utility and it is generally very good for full system backups and restores.

But what if you want to backup just your personal data or certain files or folders and not others? What if you just want to restore one particular file? There are plenty of third party tools that will do the job, but some can be rather expensive. Besides, why buy what you already have.

Supplied in Windows Vista, 7, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2, as well as the previous resource kits is a utility called "Robocopy." This is a small command line based tool (a bit like XCopy) that can be scripted and configured with exceptions, to copy selective data either once or on a schedule and even write to a comprehensive log file.