File/Folder Sync Program

jozi

I'm looking for something I can use for syncing a few folder between drives. I was using Allway Sync but it thinks I've synced to many files and that I need to buy it cause I'm a pro user :rolleyes:

What I need is something that can sync from my main drive to 2x backup drives (one internal, the other external) but can also sync from eitherof the backup drives to my main drive.

With allway I could sync to both external drives at the same time which was what I like about it as it was a single click for all 3 drives to sync-up.

Anything free and similar out there?

qwertz

I have used Second Copy in the past. Have a look at the current version. MS Sync Toy comes to mind as well but that might be out of date.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_synchronization_software

jozi

Last time I checked Synctoys it couldn't perform a sync from one location to two other locations, but maybe they have up dated it, will check it later. Second copy unfortunately isnt free.

I'd come across that wiki page also, anyone got any recommendations from it?

qwertz

Sync Toy was a bit limited. IIRC then I had syncs to multiple destinations but as separate tasks at separate times.

unkel

jozi wrote: »

What I need is something that can sync from my main drive to 2x backup drives (one internal, the other external)

Would you consider a cloud solution? You can make the one directory on your computer sync to multiple cloud locations (providers)

jozi

Maybe some day but not right now. There's a lot of data as well, it would kill my cap and take forever to upload. It's pretty much just my My Documents folder (college stuff makes up a lot of this) and all my photo's which is a lot of gb's.

unkel

Ah ok. My important stuff doesn't amount to more than 15-20GB and is all backed up in multiple cloud accounts. If you have much bigger files and not such a good internet connection, I guess that's not an option

28064212

Robocopy. Built in to Windows, very configurable.

Simple example:

robocopy "C:\Users\name\Documents" "\\networkdrive\backup\target\Users\name\Documents" /MIR /np /xj /w:1 /r:1

/MIR is the important option, it just means mirror the first directory to the second
/np is 'quiet' mode, don't output the progress bars
/xj means don't copy junctions, you can end up in infinite loops on Windows if you don't include this
/w:1 and /r:1 are for files that robocopy can't access, w is number of seconds to wait before retrying, and r is the number of retries to attempt (the defaults are to keep trying indefinitely)

Running this command means you end up with an exact copy of your documents folder on \\networkdrive. Running it in the future will just update the files that have changed, and delete files from the backup if they're been deleted from the source.

If you edit the backup, any changes made are mirrored back to the source (although I recommend testing this before relying on it)

jozi

unkel wrote: »

Ah ok. My important stuff doesn't amount to more than 15-20GB and is all backed up in multiple cloud accounts. If you have much bigger files and not such a good internet connection, I guess that's not an option

It's 288gb's, RAW photo's make up a lot of disk space and there's a lot of college research material there to.

28064212 wrote: »

Robocopy. Built in to Windows, very configurable.

That sounds complicated but I might look into it

qwertz

IIRC then there is a GIU frontend for RoboCopy. RichCopy comes to mind.