Sync directories between Windows PC and NAS

Lee_Howden

Can anyone recomend a piece of software which will be able to sync the contents of directories between two different locations i.e. between a directory on my windows pc and my NAS? Ideally I would like the sotware to work in the background and copy the file across when straight after a file is added/amended/deleted.

Also, a package that doesn't cost the earth would be lovely!

kevsan

I use synctoy in conjunction with a scheduled batch file to back stuff up on a regular occassion, depending where i am.

Although it wouldn't pick up immediate changes, you could schedule it to run every 30 minutes or so.

If you want the details let me know.

mr_fishbulb

Robocopy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy

Download as part of this:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en

zebedy

Hi, I'm not very techie-minded but from a recommendation on this forum, I use Synctoy and it is really easy and so useful. I like the preview feature too.

esuhl

I used to use SyncToy... until I discovered significant discrepancies in the number of files/folders in the source and destination folders. There's no way I would trust it to back up critical files any more.

FreeFileSync seems to work perfectly however...

GaryS

Another free one that works well is SyncBack.

kevsan

esuhl wrote: »

I used to use SyncToy... until I discovered significant discrepancies in the number of files/folders in the source and destination folders. There's no way I would trust it to back up critical files any more.
.

I've never had any problems with it - can you elaborate on the kind of discrepancies you found?

zebedy

with Synctoy you do need to be careful to choose the right action for what you want to do. For me I "echo" from right to left rather than sync.
I've never had any problems with it

kevsan

Same here - i have a number of files moves in a batch script, all using contribute. as i say - never had any problems

esuhl

kevsan wrote: »

I've never had any problems with it - can you elaborate on the kind of discrepancies you found?

Sure - I have a main PC in my house (running XP Pro) and a laptop (running XP Home). I used SyncToy to copy the "My Documents" folder on the laptop to the main PC. I can't remember the exact numbers, but there were about 2800 files and 300 folders in the source location. I examined the destination folder after SyncToy reported that it had successfully synchronised the folder pair and found that there were only around 2500 files and 250 folders and a 200MB discrepancy in the size of the folders.

This problem occurred with the older version (1.x) of SyncToy as well as the new version (2.x). I was logged in as Administrator on both PCs, had sufficient file permissions, and the problem was replicated after creating a completely new folder pair. After a bit of research on some forums I discovered that this is a common problem with SyncToy.

It may simply be that system files such as desktop.ini and thumbs.db are not being copied... but I would have expected a much smaller discrepancy than ~200MB since those files are typically very small.

I've only used FreeFileSync a few times, but the number of files, folders and bytes in the destination folder corresponded precisely with those in the source.

Hope this helps...

esuhl

Oh, yes - I was using "echo" mode...

Strange that it works for others, though - I just thouyght it was a rubbish program! I reinstalled the OS on my main PC a few months ago and it didn't make any difference. I wonder why I was having problems... (I'm not wondering that hard, though, since FreeFileSync is just as easy to use!)