How to sync folders on external hard drives?

Hi,

Have a little problem; often I spend a lot of time syncing folders on multiple external hard drives attached to my laptop.

What I'm looking for is a nice clean simple program that would be able to sync two or more folders, copying the files necessary to make the folders identical and never delete any files.

In other words something to do this:

Before
Folder1: File 1,2,3,4,5
Folder2: File 6,7,8,9,10

After
Folder1: File 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
Folder2: File 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10


Its been taking me ages to do this recently as the folders I'm working with have huge amounts of files and I'm having to visual inspect for any differences then move the files with Ctrl-C & Ctrl-V.

Thanks in advance!

 

What about this I've only briefly used it though.

 

I was going to suggest the same tool. Microsoft's Synctoy.

 

I tried sync toy and every other sync softwares but there is one called dsynchonise which does the job perfect and it uses very less resources and syncs every 30 mins (any predefined interval).

 

I myself am open to more fully featured file sync programs, as Synctoy isn't exactly a swiss army knife

 

I have used a tool called SureSync for several years. I did an extensive analysis of many different tools at the time and this one came out on top. It can set up all sorts of different scenarios depending on your needs. For example it has a type of sync called multi mirror that can allow you to work on files on a laptop and a desktop changing files, deleting files etc and it can resolve changes on BOTH devices and make sure both look identical. Many other sync tools fail that test. What if I delete a file on the laptop and then sync? Most sync tools will copy the file from the desktop back onto the laptop. In multimirror mode, Sure Sync is smart enough to realize that during the last sync the file existed on both, now it is gone from one, meaning it should now be gone from both. But that is just ONE mode.

In another mode you can indicate that one machine is the master, say the desktop. And the other machine, the laptop, is the slave. A file deleted from the laptop will be restored from the master, in this mode.

It can also sync multiple machines at the same time. I have it setup in multi mirror mode for my documents folder between my desktop, my laptop and a file store on my server. The file store on the server is then copied to tape backup each night.

It does all of this by keeping a datbase of all of the files on the various machines with date and time stamps for each. Then it uses the current state of each drive, the database and the rules you set up for each sync relationship to perform its magic. Really powerful application. I have never found anything that comes even close.

SureSync is the BEST $69 I ever spent on a piece of software. They have much more expensive versions for servers including fail over server setups on multiple continents.

http://www.softwarepursuits.com/SureSync/SureSync.asp


Gary

 

The idea sync program would be like Window's Offline Files mode.

Files stored in a network share are copied locally and syncs are in the background. While it doesn't especially handle merges all that well (IE, two people making changes at the same time), changes made on one side are reflected on the otherside almost instantly. The network share is offline, the changes are cached locally til the network share is back online.

Too bad it only works on network shares and not on external drives.