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I’d like to backup my system with Robocopy and Powershell, but Robocopy is not able to copy open files. Volume Shadows Copy seems a solution but I can’t find any clear and simple explanation on how to use it. Is there any documentation out there that is clear and simple?

I’m running on Windows 7 x64 Enterprise. Thanks for your help. Franck

Raystafarian
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Franck
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    Google for Adi Oltean. His blog had good info on getting VSS snapshots mounted for other scripts to use. You might also find the open source HoboCopy tool handy. – afrazier Feb 04 '12 at 01:21
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    [Adi Oltean's Weblog - Flashbacks on technology, programming, and other interesting things](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adioltean/) – Oliver Salzburg Jun 03 '12 at 10:55
  • @afrazier I did not see your comment till after I posted my answer, if you want to post your comment as a answer I will delete my answer and vote up yours for mentioning it first (by over a year :) ) – Scott Chamberlain Jun 02 '13 at 17:29

2 Answers2

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Check out the WMI Win32_ShadowCopy class. It has a Create method:

(Get-WmiObject -list win32_shadowcopy).Create("C:\","ClientAccessible")

I like DriveImage XML as a fully built VSS backup solution. It's free.

Oliver Salzburg
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Andy Arismendi
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There is a open source project called HoboCopy which is a bit of a clone of RoboCopy but it will natively use the Volume Shadow Copy Service when trying to create it's backups.

Scott Chamberlain
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  • FYI: HoboCopy has had no update since 2010. Its creator declares ShadoSpawn as a replacement but that has also seen no update since 2010. – ndemou Dec 21 '20 at 11:45