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Backup USB Drive on Insertion

April 25th, 2007 by Eric

This is a great way to backup a USB flash drive. After adding this batch file to your flash drive, just click the backup option to copy all files to your local hard drive.

Step 1: Create the folder you want to backup to (Mines c:\removablebackup)
Step 2: Create the backup batch file for your USB key. You can do this by inserting the following in a textfile and saving it as backup.bat. An example is provided below:

@echo off
echo ——————-
echo Removable Device Automatic Backup
echo ——————-
echo No Rights Reserved, do whatever you want with this.
xcopy “*” “c:\removablebackup\” /Y /E /R
echo Backup Complete!
Pause.

Make sure you change the section in bold to reflect your individual backup location.

Step 3: Place the following in a text document, and save it directly to your removable drive as autorun.inf:

[autorun]
action=Backup
open=backup.bat
label=Backup
includeRuntimeComponents=True

Step 4: Your done! Now whenever you insert your USB key you should see this nifty backup option:

You can also add the /D flag to the xcopy command to only copy new/changed files.