The Problem

We would like to backup our critical files from several network shares to a removable hard drive. We want to automate the backup so we don't have to remember to run it. It needs to finish overnight. Furthermore, we want to be able to preserve multiple versions of each file so we can back out of our user's mistakes easier.

Background Information

I work in a large Windows-based enterprise with a centralized IT section who is responsible for all backups. Their backups are geared towards disaster recovery and not user error, and require upper-level management approval for any non-disaster recoveries. Several times we have noticed that our backups have failed, we weren't notified. I do not have administrative rights to the server or my desktop. We are trying to backup some 198,000 files spanning about 240 gigabytes. These files rarely change. Our backup drive is one terabyte.

My Proposed Solution

What I would like to do is to write a batch file using Robocopy with the /mir option along with Mercurial SCM to store all versions of the file. I would do an hg add followed by an hg commit before each execution of Robocopy to save the current state, and then make a mirrored copy of the file structures. The problem is the /mir will delete every folder not present in the source, and Mercurial stores the repository in a .hg folder in the destination folder.

Does anybody know how I could either convince Mercurial to store the .hg folder elsewhere, or convince Robocopy not to delete it from the destination?

I'm trying to avoid writing a custom program do to copying.