Batch Script to move files

[John Henry]

We are running a piece of phone software (IP Office) that has recently been configured to record all incoming and outgoing calls, meaning it saves hundreds of Megs of data to one of its subdirectories throughout the working day. Unfortunately it is installed on a very small drive, so I presently have to copy the files over to a larger drive every day. Moving the software is not an option and it doesn't appear to be configurable to save to a different drive.

How would I go about creating a batch script to move the files automatically, say every hour?

[TheProf]

What OS are you using?

[maleficent]

If you've got Windows 2000 or better, there's a built in Scheduler with it - -you could set the batchfile up to run on the scheduler.

Then it's matter of running a simple batch file that does

Xcopy [current data directory] [new directory]

Then if that's successful
Del [current data directory]

[Cynthetiq]

FTP script from a macro scheduler.

[John Henry]

D'oh! Forgot to say, we're running sbs 2003.

Thanks maleficent, that looks like the kind of thing I need.

The other thing I forgot to mention is that I don't really know anything about batch files. Do I have to put anything in to tell it only to execute the delete if the copy is succesful or will it exit automatically if it encounters a problem?

[trache]

John:

Usually (but not always!) MS-DOS-based programs exit with errorlevel 0 upon success, otherwise it is something else (it could be any number really, this is chosen by the programmer of said application).

From XCOPY, a web page I found about said command, it states:

Errorlevels

* 0 Files were copied without error
* 1 No files were found to copy
* 2 The user pressed CTRL+C (^C) to terminate XCOPY
* 4 Initialization error occurred. There is not enough memory or disk space, or you entered an invalid drive name or invalid syntax on the command-line
* 5 Disk write error occurred

So, in your batch file you could write the following:

XCOPY <parameters>
IF ERRORLEVEL 5 GOTO DISKERROR
IF ERRORLEVEL 4 GOTO INITERROR
IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO CTRLC
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO NOFILES
IF ERRORLEVEL 0 GOTO SUCCESS
GOTO END

:DISKERROR
echo A disk error occured.
REM This line is a REMARK line (or comment).  It does nothing.
REM You can put any commands you want here!  When the batch file
REM hits GOTO END, it will do just that - go to the label marked "END".
GOTO END

:INITERROR
echo  Initialization error occurred. There is not enough memory or disk space, or you entered an invalid drive name or invalid syntax on the command-line.
GOTO END

:CTRLC
echo User pressed CTRL-C!
GOTO END

:NOFILES
echo No files were found to copy.
GOTO END

:SUCCESS
echo Files were copied successfully!
GOTO END

:END
echo Done.

Just a note on batch files: You must put the errorlevel checks in decreasing order - MS-DOS/XP-DOS was changed from the original code in such a way that makes it broken in this regard.

I wish I could dig up the batch file I wrote for my BBS I operated a few years ago (on a 2400 baud modem!). It was a couple of pages long and did everything - ran Binkley, all my nightly maintenance scripts and handled my echomail!

[John Henry]

Thanks guys, that seems to work perfectly. There's one other issue that I'm hoping somebody will be able to help me with, though. When the script gets to the delete section, there is always a good chance that one of the files will be in use and the script will exit with an error. Is there perhaps some kind of "On Error Resume Next" that I can use to get round it?

Edit:
It appears that it does that anyway. Sorry.