yCopy2 User Manual

Welcome!

yCopy2 is designed to maintain copies of any folder you choose. If you use the sync option, files and folders in the destination which are no longer present in the source folder will be removed, thus ensuring the copy is identical. This also avoids the problem where you rename a folder in your source and end up with two copies with different names but identical contents in the backup folder.

There are many commandline options, including the ability to use variables for day/month/year, which means you could keep a rolling montly backup of your Documents folder in C:\Backups\January, C:\Backups\February and so on. I keep a daily sync in K:\Backups\01, 02, 03, etc, where the number is the day of the month.

yCopy2 is multithreaded, which means it will clean up old files and copy new ones at the same time.

Copyright and terms of use

yCopy2 is copyright Spacejock Software

You may distribute yCopy2 to whoever you like providing you don't modify the program or associated documentation. You can charge a small fee to cover the cost of distribution on CD, but you may not sell the program itself. You must also make it clear that the program can be downloaded free from www.spacejock.com.

This program is updated often. Visit the home page at Spacejock Software often to check for newer versions, or use the 'Check for update' feature within the program.

Before you get to the rest of the manual, let me explain about the inbuilt auto-updater. By default, this feature is switched off, but if you'd like to know when a new release of this program is available you should manually 'Check for Update' and then select the update frequency using the drop-down menu. See the image below for a reference:

If this option is selected as shown, the program will perform a check for a new update once a week. Assuming you run the program, that is. This feature is not something which runs in the background all the time.

Important Notice
I have done my best to make yCopy2 as free of errors as possible, but I cannot guarantee it is completely bug-free. I cannot be held liable for any damage you or your computer may suffer after installing or using this program. If you don't accept that, please uninstall it now.

Donations to this project are appreciated

This software is free to download and use, but please feel free to donate towards my projects. Funds raised lead to new features and updates, and they also free me up to write more quick start guides, help files and so on.

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If you prefer, you can email a donation to
(Don't be embarrased to chip in the minimum ... it's better to donate $5 than not donate $25!)

How to backup your data with yCopy2

yCopy can be run and used as a typical windows program, via the start menu, allowing you to specify source and destination before running a backup, or it can be used from the commandline.

If your destination folder is different than the source (e.g. C:\Temp to K:\Other) then a Temp folder will be created inside the destination folder K:\Other and the C:\Temp contents will be copied there.

SYNC Warning: Use the SYNC option with caution, as it WILL erase files from the destination path. The worst case is if you sync a folder containing a single file into a folder of the same name but containing a multitude of important files. So, if you don't understand how the sync option works ... don't use it! (Example of bad use: You empty your My Documents folder by mistake, then sync the empty folder into your backup in D:\Backups\My Documents. This way the D:\Backups\My Documents folder will also end up empty!)

REMINDER: if you use the SYNC option, ALL FILES AND FOLDERS in the destination folder of the same name as the source folder which are NOT present in the source folder will be deleted.

INCREMENTAL Warning: During an incremental backup yCopy2 works with three folders: the source, the incremental primary and the destination. Source is where your live, important data is. Incremental Primary is the folder yCopy2 checks before copying files to Dest. If a file exists in Incremental Primary AND it's the same size and date as the file in Source, it is NOT copied to Dest. In addition to this, during an incremental copy (whether sync is enabled or not), if yCopy2 finds an identical file in Dest AND in the Incremental Primary folder (same name, location, date), it will DELETE the second copy from Dest, leaving the original in Incremental Primary. The behaviour is like this because you may have 31 copies of 'My Documents', saved by day number. You decide to switch to incremental, and rename day 01 as '00 Primary'. Now, each time you run an incremental backup yCopy2 would normally leave all the duplicate files in folders 01-31, which isn't what an incremental backup is all about.

Restoring an incremental backup: Just copy the primary folder to the recovery drive, then copy the latest incremental folder over the top of it, overwriting all files and folders. (You don't need to restore all the intervening incremental backups: yCopy2's incremental backup contains all new and altered files, and is equivalent to the difference between the primary and the source.)

If you run it from the start menu you have to specify source and destination every time. There's a much better way: open the yCopy2 program folder and drag the icon to your Desktop, holding Control and Shift before you release it.

Then right-click the new shortcut and click Properties.

On the Shortcut tab, the 'Target' box will show the location of the yCopy2 exe file, in quotes. Add one space at the end and enter -sync "Source Folder" "Destination Folder", ensuring Source and Dest are both valid paths. Eg:

Then click Ok.

Now rename the shortcut to reflect the backup - e.g. Daily MyDocs Backup. You can now use this shortcut to run the same backup each time. You can also duplicate the shortcut by dragging it elsewhere on the desktop with Ctrl held down. Then modify the Source and Dest paths and rename the new copy.

Commandline switches and options

If you'd rather control the options manually, these are the currently supported variables you can use in the destination folder string:

$TODAY$ - Today's date in your default system format
$DATE$ - The current date in YYYYMMDD format
$DD$ - The current day as a two-digit number. E.g. 27
$DAY$ - The current day as a word. E.g. Tuesday
$MM$ - The current month as a two-digit number. E.g. 01
$MMM$ - The current month as a three- or four-letter short name (e.g. Jan)
$MONTH$ - The full current month name, e.g. January.
$YY$ - The current year as YY

$YEAR$ or $YYYY$ - The current year as YYYY

$TIME$ - The current time as HH.MM.SS

$SHORTTIME$ - The current time as HH.MM (no seconds)

$HH$ - The current time as HH (Just the hour, 24-hour format)

Some examples:

yCopy2 "C:\My Documents" "D:\Backup\$DAY$"

When run each day, mydocs will be copied into Mon, Tue, Wed etc.

yCopy2 "C:\My Documents" "D:\Backup\$DATE$"

Each day, mydocs will be copied into a folder dated YYYYMMDD (using the current date)

yCopy2 "C:\My Documents" "D:\Backup\$MM$ - $MONTH$"

When run, My Documents will be copied into D:\Backup\01 - January\ (for example)
After 12 months, 01 - January will be reused the following year.

The -sync parameter:

Adding the -sync parameter cleans old files out of the destination folder during the copy process:

yCopy2 -sync "C:\My Documents" "D:\Backup\$DAY$"

The EXT= parameter:

Specifying EXT= (e.g. EXT=txt;doc;pdf) at the end of the command-line will only back up and clean files with those extensions.

yCopy2 -sync "C:\My Documents" "D:\Backup\$DAY$" EXT=txt;doc;pdf

(You can also use the '~' character instead of '=', which will prevent issues running from batch files where you're trying to pass the option as a variable. That's because the variable will truncate at the = in batch files, which is bad.)

The AFTER= parameter:

Specifying AFTER= (e.g. AFTER=23/7/2004) at the end of the command-line will only back up files dated on or after the specified date. Be sure to use the same date format you have Windows set up for - e.g. DD/MM/YYYY.

yCopy2 -after=23/7/2004 "C:\My Documents" "D:\Backup\$DAY$" EXT=txt;doc;pdf

This next command uses $TODAY$, which is the current date in your system date format:

yCopy2 -after=$TODAY$ "C:\My Documents" "D:\Backup\$DAY$" EXT=txt;doc;pdf

You cannot use SYNC and AFTER together, otherwise a backup would clean out all other files in the destination other than those dated after the specified date.

The -IGNORE-NOBACKUP parameter:

You can create NoBackup.ycp files inside any folder you do not want yCopy2 to back up. If you perform a backup, then add a NoBackup.ycp file to a source folder at a later date, then perform a sync backup, the folder containing the NoBackup.ycp file, and all folders and files contained in that folder, will be deleted from the destination.

However, if you use -IGNORE-NOBACKUP on the command line NoBackup.ycp will be treated just like any other file, and the folders and files which would normally have been skipped and/or cleaned will be backed up.

For example, this would allow you to run a quick daily backup of only your important sub-folders from a directory tree, and a full backup once a week or month including all folders & files.

The -EXCLUDEFOLDERS= parameter:

You have to specify a file after the ExcludeFolders= parameter. This file should contain a simple list of strings, each of which will be used to exclude folders from the backup. For example, EA Games now puts over 1 gig of Sims 2 saved game data into My Documents, causing havoc with a careful backup regimen. Therefore, the following would exclude Sims 2 from the backup process:

yCopy2 -ExcludeFolders=MyExclude.txt "C:\My Documents" "D:\Backup\

MyExclude.txt looks like this:

Sims 2
Dungeon Siege
GTA San Andreas