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HOW TO Backup a Watershed with 7-Zip
HOW TO… How to Back up a Watershed with 7-Zip
Background
A watershed is a directory tree containing the files and folders stored by your modeling application to represent your watershed. The HEC applications that store their models in a watershed tree are CWMS, HEC-WAT, HEC-RTS, HEC-ResSim, HEC-FIA, HEC-SSP, and HEC-GridUtil. The root of the watershed directory tree is a folder with the same name as your watershed. In the figure below, the folder NAE_Thames is the root of the NAE_Thames watershed. The easiest and most reliable way to back up a watershed (model, project) is to use a utility program such as 7Zip to create a compressed archive file of your whole watershed folder, its subfolders, and their contents. The following instructions assume you have 7-Zip® installed on your computer and that you have enabled its integration into the Windows® Shell so that a 7-Zip menu appears in the context menu when you right-click on a file or folder in the Windows File Explorer.7-Zip® is free, open source software that you can download fromwww.7-zip.org. Once installed, you can configure your Windows integration settings as follows: launch 7-Zip File Manager, then select Options… from the Tools menu. In the Options Editor, select the 7-Zip tab, then activate the first three checkboxes to enable the 7-Zip integration into the Windows shell context menu with a 7-Zip submenu.
The Process
Open a Windows File Explorer and browse to the folder (watershed location) where your watershed is located.
In the left pane of the Windows Explorer window, find the root folder of the watershed you want to archive (backup), then right-click on that folder to open the context menu.
In the context menu, find and hover over the 7-Zip submenu to open the list of 7-Zip commands.
Select Add to Archive… This will open the Add to Archive dialog from 7-Zip.
At the top of the Add to Archive dialog you'll find a name field (labeled Archive:) showing the name of the folder you selected appended with the .7z extension. It is recommended that you modify the name of the archive with a unique identifier. For example, consider appending the date or a phrase to indicate the purpose or special contents of the archive to the watershed name.
Several options are available to control the type of compression, the contents, and add encryption. The default settings are usually appropriate although you might consider increasing the Compression level to Ultra; this will increase the time it takes to create the archive but will result in a smaller product, which can be important if you intend to upload the file to a network drive.
Click OK to create the Archive.
A progress dialog will appear showing some details regarding the compression process.
When complete, the archive file can be found in the same folder where you found the watershed itself, as illustrated below.
