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I have an external SSD with a "complete" back-up copy of all my data. I don't keep such a "complete" copy of my data on my PC—I prefer to keep my PC's drive as empty as possible. If I want to work on a file that is stored on the "complete" copy on the SSD I first copy it over to the PC, then do the work on it. Now, say I have done this for several files, such that I have on my PC, say, 10 files which all have corresponding "previous-versions" on the external SSD, though the copies held on the PC have all been updated. I now want to update just these 10 files on the "complete" copy on the external SSD.

My thought is that I would first create directories on my PC that match the "complete" copy of my data on the external SSD—"mirrored" directories. Then, I would move these 10 files into their respective folders in these "mirrored" directories on the PC. Then, I would use some software like Macrium Reflect to target the copies of those 10 files held on the external SSD and update them according to the copies held on the PC in the "mirrored" directories.

Obviously, if it were just the one external SSD, it would be just as much work to simply copy over the 10 files to the external SSD, manually placing them in the correct directories at the same time; but in reality I have more than one external SSD to update in this way.

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1 Answers1

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Your desire to have as little data on your local drives is probably one of several roots of your problems here, and as a result of this and your other assumptions and preferences, you're making a (relatively) simple process needlessly complex.

Backups are best when they are accessed as infrequently as possible. Writing to backups to add to them or update them is fine; do that as often as you prefer. But retrieving files out of a backup is best done rarely, only when necessary.

In your situation you don't actually have a backup, you have a portable disk source storage for the files you're working on. If you are doing this because you lack space on your internal drives, that's one thing, but that means you really don't have a backup at all.

The optimal setup for your needs is:

  1. Store all the data on your internal drives, making sure there is enough room for them. If you don't have enough storage, feel free to use external drives AS WORKING DRIVES, and do not think of these as backups, because they aren't. Or, buy bigger drives for internal use (this is the best and simplest way)
  2. Use a backup utility to backup these drives to remote or external storage, using either full backups (backing everything up, whether it was changed or not, which uses the most space) or "deltas" (backing up only the files that have changed since the previous backup, more space efficient, CAN be more intensive to restore properly in event of a data loss).

Regarding the situation you are currently in, if it's only a handful of files, just move them back into place manually. If it's a lot of files, most file copy utilities allow you to copy and only overwrite older files with newer files. Robocopy can do this pretty easily. But, this will simply continue the problematic and complex system you are using, and you should do this only if it is necessary to get a clean set of the data now, and then you should proceed with the recommendations I've given earlier in my answer.

To make Robocopy keep the newest copies of files in a transfer, use the /xo switch.

robocopy source destination /xo

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