Kodak Easyshare and Backups

Kodak Easyshare has a backup option, but it will not allow you to backup to any other than a local drive. However, not every PC contains multiple drives. In fact, most don't. I prefer to backup to a networked drive, but Kodak won't let me:



When creating a backup, it is essential to store data on a separate and distinct PC. This is because a computer can be destroyed or stolen. A virus or other computer glitch can eradicate the entire file system. If you are backing up files to the same PC, it is not without value; but it carries greater risk than backing up to a different PC.

To preserve my photo album from destruction, I developed a method for backing up a photo album myself, which is a simple batch file that supports networked drives. This works on Windows XP, but I cannot vouch for any other version. If you wish to use this batch, you will have to customize it for your system.

---

cls
c:

@For /F "tokens=2,3,4 delims=/ " %%A in ('Date /t') do @(
Set Month=%%A
Set Day=%%B
Set Year=%%C
)

@echo DAY = %Day%
@echo Month = %Month%
@echo Year = %Year%

@echo This utility will backup the contents of c:\art\%Year%

pause

if not exist c:\art\%Year% goto err_msg
if not exist \\GLORIOUSIGOR\kodak\%Year% md \\GLORIOUSIGOR\kodak\%Year%

Set source=c:\art\%Year%\*.*
set dest=\\GLORIOUSIGOR\kodak\%Year%

xcopy %source% %dest% /D /S /Y
pause
exit

err_msg:
echo Year has not been created on source computer yet!
pause
exit

---

Notes:

• Day and Month are unused, but I left them in there, because you may find useful this method of extracting the current system day, month, and year, if you like to write your own batches. I forget where I nicked this snippet of code.


• The Xcopy command is instructed through the optional switches to not copy files which have already been copied, to copy subdirectories, and to go ahead and overwrite already existing files.


• This batch expects that each year has its own directory, such that all photos from 2009 are stored in a directory named "2009". Otherwise, it can be a chore to locate specific dates, because Kodak defaults to storing photos in directories with a MM-DD-YYYY naming convention, dropping the leading zeroes. In past versions of Easyshare, there was an option for changing the naming convention, but I have not found it in the new version. The optimal naming convention is YYYY-MM-DD, without dropping leading zeroes. When sorted alphabetically, such a directory begins with the earliest and ends with the latest, which makes finding specific dates a breeze.


• This batch can be adapted for multiple uses.