Automatically copy files in use

Question

I have some files that are always in use and I want to make a copy of them automatically on another disk. I have tried Shadow Copy, but it does not put them in a specific path so that I can access them and send them in an email automatically

Automatically copy files in use

Answer 1

One way to make a copy of files that are always in use is to use the robocopy command-line utility. robocopy is a robust file copying tool that is built into Windows. It can handle copying files that are in use, and it has a wide range of options that allow you to customize the copy process.

For example, you can use the '/mir' option to mirror the source folder to the destination folder, the /r:n option to retry the copy operation a specified number of times if errors occur, and the '/w:n' option to specify the wait time between retries.

You can also use the '/log' option to create a log file of the copy operation, and the '/np' option to suppress the display of the file-transfer progress.

robocopy C:\SourceFolder D:\DestinationFolder /mir /r:3 /w:3 /log:C:\Robocopy.log /np

You can schedule this command to run at specific intervals using the Task Scheduler. Then you can use this command to copy the files that are in use at specific intervals.

Additionally you can use any language or automation tool to send the files after the copy operation is done