[WxMan1]

There are several backup methodologies: full, incremental, and differential.

Full system backups are highly accurate, but slow (both to make and restore). Incremental backups are fast and backup anything that is new or changed since the last full system or incremental backup (both of these backups set the archive bit to off). Differential backups backup anything that is new or changed since either the last full or incremental backup.

While incremental backups are quick, they're a pain to restore; each and every incremental has to be restored in order. Differential backups end up taking progressively longer. But only the most recent differential needs to be restored after restoring the most current full system backup. At some point, however, it would be beneficial to just make a new full system backup.

So where's the beef?

IF a file / folder was renamed or deleted SINCE the last full system backup (or any subsequent incremental backup), restoration of full system + incremental backup set, or most recent full backup + latest differential backup, will both result in inaccurate system state, i.e., deleted / renamed files and / or folders will co-exist after restoration of backup sets.

How to get around that? Easy peasy, use a progressive backup methodology.

If one uses the integrated WinXP NTBackup.exe, then a baseline system backup point can be established. At this point all the archive bits are off. What is needed is some way to establish system state at the time of either incremental or differential restore. How to do that?

Open notepad, and paste the following into it:

dir %1 /s /b > %1\filelst_Full.log

Save this to %systemroot%\filelst_Full.cmd

Change the above line to read:

dir %1 /s /b > %1\filelst_Diff.log

and save it to %systemroot%\filelst_Diff.cmd.

Now, in Windows Explorer, click Tools, then click Folder Options. Click the File Types tab, and then click Folder. Click the Advanced button and then click New to open New Action box. In the New Action box, type the name for the context menu item, e.g., File List (Full). Browse to the location where the app file is located, select it for Application Used to Perform Actions. Click OK and Apply and OK. Do the same for File List (Diff); you'll see why in a moment the latter is important.

Now, before doing a full system backup, right click on the drive letter, and select FILE LIST (FULL). This will make a text file in the root of the drive (or folder if that's the case) containing the directory structure of the drive or folder (and all sub-folders the drive / folder contains) at that moment in time.

Prior to making any quick and dirty incremental or differential backups (catching all the changes and additions since the latest backup), choose FILE LIST (DIFF). This will create a new directory structure baseline. HOWEVER, the filelst_Full.log file will NOT get backed up (since it hasn't changed since the last full system backup), but the filelst_Diff.log file will because its new. This will hold true for each and every incremental or differential backup that you do susequently.

The reason for differing filelst names should now become apparent: you don't want to overwrite the filelst.log file with the latest differential / incremental backup filelst.log. What would you compare to?

All that needs to be done after restoring the full sys & ALL incremental backups (or latest differential backup), is to compare the filelst_Full.log file against the most current filelst_Diff.log files. ANYTHING that doesn't exist in the filelst_Diff.log file can be safely deleted (as it didn't exist at the time of making the differential or last incremental backup).

The only caveat here is that if you're comparing folder file list logs of two different file systems that are actually duplicate, then you'll have to edit the logs to replace the %rootnames% for the file systems in the filelist.log files with null (in order to make entries in the logs compare identical). For example comparing C:\Documents & C:\Documents_bak will yield differences if an only if occurances of C:\Documents was replaced with null in the one file, and occurances of C:\Documents_bak was replaced with null in the other file.

Didn't I say easy peasy?

Note: To remove context menu item(s):

Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\[app_name] using regedit and deleting the [app_name] key in the left pane.

Close regedit and reboot to complete removal of context menu item(s).