Synctoy Alternative?

isofa

Iconic wrote: »

I have an external hard drive which I use to back up all my files. I then use the same external hard drive to get my photos, music and video's to my media centre.That's why I need good sync software.

I have never been convinced by Acronis. Although it would be a pain if my hard drive failed, all my personal files are backed up so I would only lose time and the software that I got free with the computer!

I use SyncToy to Sync media collections between Mac and PC, photos from PC to external drives and between Macs and PCs (I have hundreds of thousands if not more, I'm a photographer), never really had a problem. But I know some people have problems.

Acronis is excellent for backup, although ironically I don't use it, I prefer Retrospect. I run many different backups each week, but always a full backup weekly, and I can roll back to any file versions 5 years ago on my systems if I need to, syncs are useless for backups, if you've damaged a file or changed it by mistake, then resync'd, you won't ever have a copy of the original.

I do have other users with Acronis and they love it, it's not just a good cloning system, but fantastic for backups, when I move to Win7 soon I'll have to dump Retrospect and move to Acronis.

Iconic

esuhl wrote: »

FreeFileSync is an excellent alternative to SyncToy. It's more reliable (SyncToy always seemed to miss a tiny handful of files), quick & easy to use, and is open source too.

Stupid question but I cannot find out if it works with Vista. The old version didn't but does this?

Edit

According to this it does....

http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/downloads/2249613/freefilesync

[Deleted User]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en

StockportGerbil

A vote here for syncback (http://www.2brightsparks.com/) which I use for file copy / synchronisation

spud17

+1 for the Gerbils pick, I used to use Synctoy, but found it slow and not always accurate(?).

Never had a problem with Syncback.

Iconic

Many thanks for all the replies.

I have tried FreeFileSync which is very easy to use and appears to to everything I want except it only appears to deal in folders. Synctoy dealt with everything! However I easily got over that problem and I will use it instead of Synctoy.

I will keep a note of all the other recommendations just in case I have any problems with FreeFileSync.

duputydugg

another recommendation for Sugarsync (referral code). Use on an Apple Macbook Pro- very easy, quick and unobtrusive. Still using the free 2gb - more than enough for me.
Unexpected bonus is being able to sync various computers and to share files in a 'dropbox'

supermonkey

For free backup and sync software, I would look at Karen's Replicator or RoboCopy. Both are excellent.

If you also want to backup online there are many excellent services, my favoruite being Humyo. Does everything Dropbox, SugarSync, Mozy etc do and more. (I did a very detailed comparison)

MX5huggy

duputydugg wrote: »

another recommendation for Sugarsync (referral code). Use on an Apple Macbook Pro- very easy, quick and unobtrusive. Still using the free 2gb - more than enough for me.
Unexpected bonus is being able to sync various computers and to share files in a 'dropbox'

Is this SPAM and against the site rules posting for personal gain?

SyncToy have now fixed the NAS problem in 2.1