Backup Script

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to write up some of the utility scripts I have on my VM. The first one is pretty simple. It’s a little PowerShell script to zip up the My Documents folder on the VM, and copy it to the physical machine. (I’m using 7-Zip.)

There are a few things in this script that are pretty common tasks that I need to do when using PowerShell, so this is a good thing to put up on the blog for reference. Just to point out those things:

  1. Creating a file name that contains the current date.
  2. Running a command that’s in a string variable.
  3. Prompting to “press any key” when done, so the user can see error messages, if the script is being run from a desktop icon.
  4. Giving an option to skip the “press any key” prompt, when the command is run unattended from task scheduler.
$zipExe = "C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe"
$dateStr = '{0:yyyy-MM-dd}' -f (Get-Date)
$buFileName = "\\my-machine\c$\Users\me\Documents\backup\VM_MyDocBU_" + $dateStr + ".7z"
$myDocs = "C:\Users\me\Documents"
cd $myDocs
& $zipExe a -r $buFileName $myDocs
if (!$quiet)
     Write-Host "Press any key to continue ..."
     $x = $host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho,IncludeKeyDown")

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