Compressing a directory tree for backup
Entire organizational unit repositories are regularly backed up by IT services. Additional backups of parts of a repository may be useful to allow an easier audit of changes over time, or provide an additional layer of safety. Such additional backups should always be stored on inexpensive storage medium, e.g. workstation hard disk or CDROM, but not on a shared network drive.
Following is a simple procedure that compresses an entire directory into a single file and appends the current date to the filename. The command to perform this task are stored in a batch file which can be executed manually, i.e. by double-click, or it can be automated with the Windows Task Scheduler. The procedure requires a command line compression utility (zip.exe), which is available from this site. The Beyond Compare software can be used to compare two compressed backups and see the changes that have taken place.
The following are the procedures for creating and automating a batch file to compress directories for backup. Also included is a procedure for comparing the generated backups.