Hi again, sorry my question wasn't that clear. The directory that I back up has many different file types in it, a lot of them are Access accb and they don't take that long (although after 15 years they are very large!) I just want to know a faster way of copying all the files in the directory. Can all files be "zipped" maybe? Cheer!

How about an incremental backup? Surely the vast majority of those records don't change EVERY night. Do one FULL backup of the entire database perhaps once a month. Then every night export the data that has changed (new, edited) to a separate database and back that up nightly.

Sure, you could ZIP them up beforehand. How about archiving old data? Do you need all 15 years worth of that data in your database all the time? Could you archive most of it and keep, say, the previous 5 years of data? You could always re-import it if you need to report on it. When I moved my web site from one ISP to another, I realized that copying ALL of my customer records would take a very long time. So, I only copied over everyone who was active in the past year. That was still over 10,000 students. The other 40,000 are backed up on my server, so if someone comes back and wants to use their courses, they can just email me and with one click I can re-upload their account to the server.