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#11
The history of British Summer Time is "interesting". The current situation:
Since 2002 it is defined by European Directives. The Summer Time Order 2002, under the European
Communities Act 1972, implemented the ninth European Directive by amending the Summer Time
Act 1972. It removed the power to vary the period of Summer Time, or provide for Double Summer
Time, by Order in Council. It changed the rules for Summer Time to agree with the European rules on
a permanent basis, starting on the last Sunday in March and ending on the last Sunday in October,
both at 1am Greenwich Mean Time. It applies in Great Britain and Northern Ireland; unlike previous
orders, it does not apply in the Bailiwick of Guernsey. When the UK left the European Union the
legislation continued as UK law.
See British Summer Time - Wikipedia, better than counting sheep...
I don't use Robocopy, but I've noticed that when copying files from one filesystem to another, there's a lack of precision in timestamps. I've read that with NTFS and possibly FAT32, times can go off by 2 seconds, enough for backup utils to see the files as "different". I've seen this manually transporting files between two NTFS computers with a FAT32 pendrive, and months or years afterwards doing a manual sync between one of the computers and a backup of the other with the help of SyncBack. I guess the same could apply when applying DST in the same filesystem.
I've also read that the most precise filesystem with timestamps is exFAT.
Does Robocopy have a "fat point" :) option? If times are within say two seconds, they're considered the same. This is valid if the files do not change as frequently.
Interesting question. I had never thought about that before but I suppose it is possible that the very odd excessive re-copying I see from time to time could be related to that.
RoboCopy does have this switch which I've never really noticed before.
I would not have known what it meant without your post.Code:/FFT : Assume FAT File Times (2-second date/time granularity)
RoboCopy - SS64 says:-RoboCopy - MSLearn does not include that line of guidance.SS64 said:
Since I'm going to have to work through all my RoboCopy switches anyway, I'll add /FFT and see what happens.
Denis
Dan, JLArranz,
Success.
Our DST changeover {GMT-BST [British Summer Time] changeover} was early this morning.
I've just been running RoboCopy scripts without them repeating any incorrect files.
I worked through checking all my RoboCopy scripts last week.
- I found that only a few of them had contained the /DST script despite my remembering that switch so clearly. Perhaps what I remember so clearly was just experimenting with that switch years ago.
- I also added in that /FFT switch that I had never noticed before.
- In addition, I added in /NDL so that the commands would not waste time showing me as they were checking folders. Everything that a command writes to the screen takes time & I was getting bored with it telling me the path of each folder as it checked it for files to select.
Thanks for raising the issue.
I suggest adding in all three of these switches - /DST /FFT /NDL
My new 'norm' for a RoboCopy backup script is:-
Code:Set BackupDrive=G: RoboCopy "D:\Desktop" "%BackupDrive%\Desktop" /S /R:10 /MT:32 /DST /FFT /NDL /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR RoboCopy "D:\Documents\Work" "%BackupDrive%\Documents\Work" /S /R:10 /MT:32 /DST /FFT /NDL /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR RoboCopy "D:\Documents\Home" "%BackupDrive%\Documents\Home" /S /R:10 /MT:32 /DST /FFT /NDL /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR RoboCopy "D:\Documents\Cooking" "%BackupDrive%\Documents\Cooking" /S /R:10 /MT:32 /DST /FFT /NDL /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR RoboCopy "D:\Documents\Friends" "%BackupDrive%\Documents\Friends" /S /R:10 /MT:32 /DST /FFT /NDL /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR RoboCopy "D:\Documents\House" "%BackupDrive%\Documents\House" /S /R:10 /MT:32 /DST /FFT /NDL /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR RoboCopy "D:\Documents\Odds N Sods" "%BackupDrive%\Documents\Odds N Sods" /S /R:10 /MT:32 /DST /FFT /NDL /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR RoboCopy "D:\Documents\Suppliers" "%BackupDrive%\Documents\Suppliers" /S /R:10 /MT:32 /DST /FFT /NDL /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR Pause to look at the results until you are confident in the file. This line makes the batch file stay open when it has finished its job. ∷ Put two colons in front of Pause after you decide you no longer want it to remain open when it has finished. Or just delete the Pause line and this line.
@Paul Black
@ArthurDent
This is significantly better than my old norm - see Sample RoboCopy backing up script - TenForums [now updated]
Spiffing,
Denis
Last edited by Try3; 3 Weeks Ago at 11:18.
Dan,
And I'll be watching my scripts after the changeover as well just to check that they behave as sensibly as they did last month.
Our next changeover is a week before yours - it's on 27/10/2024.
Until the ned of the year then,
Denis