mkv and backups

[PBzeer 6]

I imagine this is a pretty simplistic question, but I couldn't really find an answer when I searched. While I'm familar with backing up my hdd, I'm wanting to only back up an external drive.

 

I do my movies in .mkv, and thanks to an unfortunate experience, now have to rerip about 500 movies. (why I didn't have backups is complicated ) Any way, will (Win 7 Pro) Windows backup do my external drive and make usable backups of my movies, or do I need an extra copy of the actual movie file? I've got the room for making seperate copies of the actual files, but not sure if it's necessary.

 

Thanks

[gthrift 57]

This is an old post and you may have found a solution already but I personally use batch scripts to make my backups.  Below is mine that you can use to do your own.  

robocopy E:\ServerFolders\Blu-Rays G:\Backup\Blu-Rays /e /mir /np /log:G:\backup_log.txt
robocopy E:\ServerFolders\Downloads G:\Backup\Downloads /e /mir /np /log+:G:\backup_log.txt
robocopy E:\ServerFolders\Music G:\Backup\Music /e /mir /np  /log+:G:\backup_log.txt
robocopy E:\ServerFolders\Pictures G:\Backup\Pictures /e /mir /np  /log+:G:\backup_log.txt
robocopy E:\ServerFolders\Software G:\Backup\Software /e /mir /np  /log+:G:\backup_log.txt
robocopy F:\ServerFolders\Books G:\Backup\Books /e /mir /np  /log+:G:\backup_log.txt
robocopy F:\ServerFolders\Movies G:\Backup\Movies /e /mir /np  /log+:G:\backup_log.txt
robocopy "F:\ServerFolders\TV Shows" "G:\Backup\TV Shows" /e /mir /np  /log+:G:\backup_log.txt

robocopy is the program used to do the copying

the 1st path is the folder you want backed up

the 2nd path ist the folder where you are backing up to

/e tells robocopy to copy all of my subdirectories

/mir tells robocopy to copy any changes I make in the source folder.  So if anything is deleted it deletes the file in the backup location (you may or may not want this.)

/np makes it so the progress is not shown in the cmd window.  (you may or may not want this, reports vary on whether or not it affects the speed of the backup but it does seem to use more resources)

/log tells it to create a log and where to put it

/log+ on the other lines appends keeps adding to the log that was created.  

 

You can also look here  to see other switches to might want to try and for a more complete explanation for robocopy.  

 

Once you create the batch file you can then create a task to run it on a schedule or if its on an external drive it can be set to run when the drive is plugged in.