Why did I write it? Because XCOPY was too slow for my needs and was lacking a compare/verify feature, so I decided to write my own utility. Besides being a good JAVA exercise, I knew I would use it every day, and I do use it everyday: I use it to backup my development computer to a memory stick.

Here is a short summary of what dirdup does:

• Copies directories
• Exclude list allows you to exclude specified files from copying
• Quick Copy Mode: checks the files´ dates/size before making the decision to copy -- this can save a lot of time when backing up to a slow-write device, such as flash memory sticks
• Full Copy Mode: compares all of the files in the destination and source directories - even if the size and dates match, DirDup does a byte-by-byte comparison to detect data deterioration
• Validates source files before they are copied - ensures that a good backup file isn´t overwritten by an incomplete or damaged source file
• Displays copied files, file statistics, and (most importantly) any errors in the log window
• You can run any task automatically, just pass it as the argument to dirdup. You can easily create a shortcut for your backup task.