Sync Laptop to Desktop?

[Gene E. Bloch]

There is also a thing called Allway Sync, but that only seems to work on one
directory at a time.

I manage to sync entire drives with Allway Sync (I see that my use of
camel case was incorrect).

I just paid for it, since my use was very heavy, and they complained.
It's not expensive.

 

[Steve Hayes]

I manage to sync entire drives with Allway Sync (I see that my use of
camel case was incorrect).

I just paid for it, since my use was very heavy, and they complained.
It's not expensive.

I use it for syncin the "My Documents" directory (which is mapped to
G:\stevedoc) to an external hard drive, and also the "Shared Documents"
directory, which (in XP) remains in a place with a long and difficult-to-type
path.

 

[Mike Barnes]

I manage to sync entire drives with Allway Sync

The OP obviously isn't looking for a power tool, but for anyone who
might be I'll mention that AJC Sync can have as many "Sync pairs" as you
like, on the same drive or different drives, within a "Project". And the
folders in a sync pair can be local, network, FTP, Amazon S3 cloud, or
Microsoft SkyDrive. The FTP sync is superb.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

The OP obviously isn't looking for a power tool, but for anyone who
might be I'll mention that AJC Sync can have as many "Sync pairs" as you
like, on the same drive or different drives, within a "Project". And the
folders in a sync pair can be local, network, FTP, Amazon S3 cloud, or
Microsoft SkyDrive. The FTP sync is superb.

Yes, I see that my understanding of the item I commented on didn't cover
that kind of situation (or what Steve Hayes meant).

I think Allway can do it, but only by a maybe clumsy workaround. I
haven't checked it out and am out of time right now. Maybe later...

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Thumb drive; camera memory cards; cell phones. These are places where
SyncToy has burned me...

I never use them there, so it works well for me.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Fokke Nauta]

Gene Bloch also recommended Allwaysync. I'll check it out. Thanks.

Let us know what you think about it.
I like it!

Fokke

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I never use them there, so it works well for me.

Yousuf Khan

I agree; and of course it's true for many others in a similar situation.

In fact, if you don't mind seeing many of your files transferred
(redundantly) one way when DST starts and the other way when it ends,
even SyncToy works when you sync between NTFS and FATxx

 

[NY]

I agree; and of course it's true for many others in a similar situation.

In fact, if you don't mind seeing many of your files transferred
(redundantly) one way when DST starts and the other way when it ends,
even SyncToy works when you sync between NTFS and FATxx

I've never had a problem with SyncToy (V2.1) synchronising between:

- PC and network share on another PC (both PCs running Win 7)
- PC and thumb drive
- PC and external HDD

Most external drives (ext HDD or thumb) have been NTFS but I've not see the
DST/non-DST issue when syncing between NTFS and FAT32.

The only funny that I've occasionally seen is that a changed file very
occasionally results in a file with a "1" in the name (eg "file.txt" becomes
"file.1.txt") on the destination drive in addition to the previous version -
it creates a duplicate instead of overwriting. But this is very rare and
I've not seen it for ages now, so it might have been with an earlier version
of SyncToy.

I've not used it with camera memory cards (eg SDHC) because I tend to
manually copy photos from the flat directory structure on the card to
separate folders on my PC. However I then use SyncToy to synchronise the
whole of my photos folder structure between desktop and laptop PCs.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I've never had a problem with SyncToy (V2.1) synchronising between:

- PC and network share on another PC (both PCs running Win 7)
- PC and thumb drive
- PC and external HDD

Most external drives (ext HDD or thumb) have been NTFS but I've not see the
DST/non-DST issue when syncing between NTFS and FAT32.

My version of SyncToy is 2.1.0.0, Build 10/19/2009 3:04:38, and I have
seen the symptom I described above frequently enough to drive me to find
an alternative.

Do you live in an area where there is DST during only part of the year?
Your time zone seems to be consistent with EST or CDT, but not with EDT,
in spite of your nym

 

[NY]

My version of SyncToy is 2.1.0.0, Build 10/19/2009 3:04:38, and I have
seen the symptom I described above frequently enough to drive me to find
an alternative.

Do you live in an area where there is DST during only part of the year?
Your time zone seems to be consistent with EST or CDT, but not with EDT,
in spite of your nym

I'm in the UK, so I'm familiar with the daylight-savings shift between GMT
and BST (British Summer Time, GMT+1). And a right pain it is too. I wish the
whole world would agree to shift permanently by half an hour (+ 1/2 hour in
northern hemisphere, - 1/2 hour in southern) so as to achieve the average
between their winter and summer time all year round, to avoid needing to
change the time on all my clocks.

I also wish the changeover dates were symmetrical about the summer/winter
solstices so we started to get the benefit of longer evenings at the
*beginning* of March, as we do until the *end* of October: waiting those
extra three weeks in March always seems interminable! I've never managed to
work out why countries decided to make fewer summer-time days before the
summer solstice than after it.

I'll have another look at SyncToy in a few weeks when we put the clocks
forward, and see if I get lots of false "changed files" because of the
difference in timestamps between the source and destination. I'll format a
thumb drive as FAT32 and sync some files from NTFS now, and then see what
happens after the change in the hour. Maybe I've not seen it because I
haven't synced with FAT very often.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I'm in the UK, so I'm familiar with the daylight-savings shift between GMT
and BST (British Summer Time, GMT+1). And a right pain it is too. I wish the
whole world would agree to shift permanently by half an hour (+ 1/2 hour in
northern hemisphere, - 1/2 hour in southern) so as to achieve the average
between their winter and summer time all year round, to avoid needing to
change the time on all my clocks.

I'd worry about the discontinuity at the equator

I also wish the changeover dates were symmetrical about the summer/winter
solstices so we started to get the benefit of longer evenings at the
*beginning* of March, as we do until the *end* of October: waiting those
extra three weeks in March always seems interminable! I've never managed to
work out why countries decided to make fewer summer-time days before the
summer solstice than after it.

I'll have another look at SyncToy in a few weeks when we put the clocks
forward, and see if I get lots of false "changed files" because of the
difference in timestamps between the source and destination. I'll format a
thumb drive as FAT32 and sync some files from NTFS now, and then see what
happens after the change in the hour. Maybe I've not seen it because I
haven't synced with FAT very often.

Probably so, and if you don't generally sync with FAT, you might as well
use what you like.