Apr 11, '06 06:40:00AM • Contributed by: e:leaf
Now, I'm terrible with backing up my system on a regular basis. But I still need for there to be a reliable backup of many of my files. So I set up a folder action to do real-time backups of all of my most needed files using missing dictionary descriptions.
To create a real-time backup system using Path Finder, open Apple's Script Editor and paste in the following code:
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
try
tell application "Path Finder"
if exists "/Volumes/path/to/foo" then --insert path to backup volume
duplicate added_items to "/Volumes/path/to/foo/" --insert path to specific folder on backup volume
else
duplicate added_items to "/Users/path/to/foo" --create a temporary folder on your hard disk so that you can save manually to backup disk
end if
end tell
end try
end adding folder items to
Save this script as a script in /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts, and then attach it to any folder.
Folder actions perform specific tasks when something has happened to the folder to which an action is attached. For instance, when any item or items are saved to a particular folder, the action will trigger a script. In this case, when the folder has any files saved to it, it will automatically copy these files to a backup drive in real time, as soon as the file(s) is saved.
What the above script does is check to see if my external backup drive is connected. If it is, it copies any items which have been saved (or copied or moved) to the folder to a specified folder on my backup drive. If the drive is not mounted, it copies those files to a temporary folder on my hard disk, so that I can manually copy them to my backup drive later.
It's not a perfect solution, but it works well. I always have the latest files backed up all of the time. And this script should be able to be easily edited, so that the Finder will do this as well.
