Sharepoint Resource Center

The tool - CruiseCradle is available on Codeplex and is described as "a great handy tool to automatically download SharePoint Documents into your USB Stick. You insert your USB Stick into your PC and Done!!!!" 

Installation and configuration:
Very straightforward and will only take a few minutes

1) Copy the downloaded files into USB Stick
- You can copy them to a dedicated folder - however, if you want to use the auto-run feature the files will need to be placed in the root of the device. 

2) Set configuration settings There are 2 files that need to be edited:

a) CruiseCradle.exe.config - The file needs the the location of SharePoint Web Services of your farm and the location of the other configuration file. 

b) CruiseCardleConfig.csv - The file lists the document libraries to be downloaded

Example - step by step configuration:

1. I copied the files to my USB stick (drive R:)

2. Open the CruiseCradle.exe.config and add 

a) the URL of the web serivces on my Sharepoint Farm
By default the our sharepoint webservices URL is built by appending /_vti_bin/lists.asmx to your base portal URL (or site URL)The URL of my portal is  http://intranet.contoso.com/ so the web services URL I added is http://intranet.contoso.com/_vti_bin/lists.asmx    
http://intranet.contoso.com/_vti_bin/lists.asmx        

http://intranet.contoso.com/_vti_bin/lists.asmx     

b) the location of your configuration file (CruiseCradleConfig.csv)
-  The configuration file can be stored either in a network drive, local computer or the USB stick itself. In my case the files are at the root of the USB stick (drive R:)

3) Open the CruiseCardleConfig.csv and add the names of the document libraries to be downloaded
- In my case 2 lines were added:
Shared Documents
Intranet Documents

That's it. When you insert your USB stick again you will see a command line prompt open and display the progress of the download process: 

Once the download has finished you will noticed a new "DownloadedFiles" folder on your USB stick. The actual documents are in subfolders named after the document libraries you chose to download. 

Notes:

• The tool doesn't seem to handle folders - only documents at the root of the libraries where downloaded. In my scenario we simply removed folders and replaced them with metadata and groupings to work around this issue.
• The tool will overwrite any existing files in the DownloadedFiles folder without a prompt - something to remember about if you plan on using the tool in scenarios where the downloaded files are to be edited.
• USB autoplay has been disabled by default in Windows 7 so you'll have to google for a work-around if you want the application to run without you having to click on anything. 
• The tool initially threw some "The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized" errors . This is was due to the fact I ran it on a PC that's not part of the domain. However, once I've added the Sharepoint URL in the Trusted Site zone in IE and used the "remember my password" option the tool run successfully and dutifully downloaded files from both
• You can only download content from libraries in one Sharepoint site. To work around it you can install a few instances of the tool with different configuration settings. 

Download and install CruiseCradle here.