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Copy a central folder to mutliple folders automatically

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by optronix_quebec

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Hey guys.

I have yet another question to ask for yet another software that could do something I haven't figured out how to do like I want it to.

I currently use foldershare for remote employess to connect to the server without any hassle through the net (great free software BTW, much easier to set-up than a VPN and seamless to the end-users which is not always the case of the VPN). The thing is my office staff sometimes updates price lists and listings that I want automatically forwarded to each remote employee's folder from a central folder location on the same server.

I'm not by any means a professional IT manager; its more of a small part of my job because I'm the one best equipped to do it. I'm pretty sure there are free simple software out there that can do what I want : I even think there are w2k3 subsystems that can do it for me. Unfortunately I don't know these options.

If you guys had suggestions to bascially copy a central folder to multiple folders on the same system (and overwrite files automatically), I'd love to hear about it. It would also need to be fully automated.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

5 replies

by retro77

Sounds like you need to run robocopy. Its a free download from Microsoft. Its in several of the resource kits I believe. There are quite a few options, one of the default ones is to copy new files and not all of the files.

I would create a batch file to call robocopy and set it as a scheduled task to run once and just have it continually running in the background. Oh ya and you can set robocopy to recheck for new files or versions of files at set intervals. Like every 10 minutes for example...Good luck!

by optronix_quebec

Thanks that's exactly what I was looking for. There even was a gui for it on technet that made setting it up a breeze. It also had all the options I was looking for so that it overwrites any changed files the guys might have modified as we want the office to have control of those files.

I've set up the necessary scripts to automate the process and want to schedule it to run at startup and I know how to do that part.

However, our server also sees some use by a user that actually does light works on it. As such, I'd like to hide the script windows from her (run them in the background ?). Since they are basic cmd windows, is there any way I could do that automaticallly ? Maybe add a line in the script to hide it ?

by retro77

Also when you schedule a batch file to launch, have it run under a local or domain account [that has permissions to the server] and if someone is logged into either the console or a remote terminal, they will never see the command prompt running. The only way to see it, is if the user opens the task manager. Then you can deny access to that as well.

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