I have a question about backing up files from the command line. We have a shared folder (stored on one of the computers) in the office containing several thousand files and subfolders. Until now, I've been doing (automatic) full backups every morning, but obviously this isn't the best way to do it because most of the files remain unchanged for many days. So, I've decided to take a different approach - backup only files created and files modified yesterday (yesterday because we assume the backup runs today in the morning) - and here's the problem.
I've looked at forfiles, xcopy and Robocopy - all of them seem to deal with "date modified" of files, but not with "date created". So, if, for example, a user created a file on his Desktop, say, a week ago, and copied it to the shared folder yesterday, this file won't be included in the backup, because, as you know, when a file is copied, it retains its "date modified" (in our case this would be a week ago) and changes its "date created" to the date it was copied on. In other words, I need the backup to search in the shared folder for files "created" yesterday. And the second problem: if a user created a file on his Desktop and MOVED (not copied) it to the shared folder yesterday, then both the "date created" and "date modified" will remain the same - and this file won't be included in the backup either. I've thought about either forcing Windows to somehow change both creation and modified dates of a file when it is copied/moved to this particular folder, to the current date (don't like this idea much though), or, something like telling Robocopy to create a file/folder list of everything in that shared folder and before doing the next backup, create a new list and compare it with the previous one - and if there are new files, add them to the backup. But no progress so far.
So, any (preferably native) solutions to the above would be much appreciated. All PCs in our office run Windows 7 Ultimate x64.
Many thanks in advance.