errors creating .bat with exclude

bewald · Joined: 04 Oct 2007 Posts: 1

Good day,
I am having an issue creating a backup.bat file that has an exclude
statement. What I am trying to do is to backup the My Documents folder
off of C: while excluding the Music directory (to save space). The
backed up files are copied to the mapped H: drive. If anyone can see
where I have gone wrong please let me know. Thank you!!!

Echo
SET ExclPath="C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\My
Documents\Exclude\exclude.txt"
XCOPY "C:\My Documents" /e /s /y H:/EXCLUDE: "C:\Documents and
Settings\%username%\My Documents\Exclude\exclude.txt"

Errors =
Invalid number of parameters

Archived from group: microsoft>public>vb>dos

The Peasant · Joined: 04 Oct 2007 Posts: 31

I think that your parameters are in the wrong order and maybe
over-complicated
DOS never liked inverted commas either.
/s is redundant in your command.

Try:-

Echo
XCOPY C:\My Documents H: /e /y /EXCLUDE:Music

More info at www.computerhope.com/xcopyhlp.htm
The Peasant

"bewald" wrote in message @microsoft.com...
> Good day,
> I am having an issue creating a backup.bat file that has an exclude
> statement. What I am trying to do is to backup the My Documents folder
> off of C: while excluding the Music directory (to save space). The
> backed up files are copied to the mapped H: drive. If anyone can see
> where I have gone wrong please let me know. Thank you!!!
>
> Echo
> SET ExclPath="C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\My
> Documents\Exclude\exclude.txt"
> XCOPY "C:\My Documents" /e /s /y H:/EXCLUDE: "C:\Documents and
> Settings\%username%\My Documents\Exclude\exclude.txt"
>
> Errors =
> Invalid number of parameters
>

Stefano Gatto · Joined: 04 Oct 2007 Posts: 1

Hello,

I think your syntax was alright, the only point was the space between
/EXCLUDE: and the filename. DOS uses spaces to delimit arguments and in this
case found more than 2 pure filenames parameters, so it said that there were
too many parameters without specifying of which type.

/e and /s are indeed redundant, but would never generate (such) an error.

What I learned myself is that the order of the destination argument and the
switch arguments /x doesn't matter, i.e.

xcopy source dest /s /v
xcopy source /s /v dest
xcopy source /s dest /v

all work the same.
--
Stefano Gatto

"bewald" wrote:

> Good day,
> I am having an issue creating a backup.bat file that has an exclude
> statement. What I am trying to do is to backup the My Documents folder
> off of C: while excluding the Music directory (to save space). The
> backed up files are copied to the mapped H: drive. If anyone can see
> where I have gone wrong please let me know. Thank you!!!
>
> Echo
> SET ExclPath="C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\My
> Documents\Exclude\exclude.txt"
> XCOPY "C:\My Documents" /e /s /y H:/EXCLUDE: "C:\Documents and
> Settings\%username%\My Documents\Exclude\exclude.txt"
>
> Errors =
> Invalid number of parameters
>