Backup Utility

Inspiration

I work at my university's computer repair center, and I felt like the backup process we went through was too tedious (not to mention risky, if the user's data was not backed up correctly).

What it does

The Backup Utility will create a folder on our repair center's network drive with the customers name and last 4 digits of their phone number (to avoid mix-ups). After prompting the user, it will also back up any product keys (Windows, Office, etc) to that same folder. At the end it will print out a report of original user data amount, and the data amount backed up.

How I built it

I managed to find command-line-compatible versions of Unstoppable Copier, and ProduKey, which do the bulk of the work. All I had to do was package it into a script that was easy enough for our technicians to use.

Challenges I ran into

Mounting the network drive was an issue at first, eventually the address was just hard-coded into the script. Calculating folder sizes would take awhile, so people would start the utility, and walk away while it was checking the size. I fixed this by adding an alert sound after it finds the sizes.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

It feels nice to have made the repair center just a bit more efficient.

What I learned

Testing is very important... I tried to break the script after I thought it was finished, in order to make it more "bulletproof".

What's next for Backup Utility

GUI, Show Elapsed Time, Support for Windows XP

Built With

• batch