Synchronizing 3 PCs
I have three PCs.
I want to be able to make changes in documents on one (of any of three) PCs to the other two. They are networked. When I connect to the other PCs, I want them to be updated to the newest document structure, without having to copy absolutely everything.
I also want to remove any deleted files, and replace any older ones. I do not need to be prompted whether to copy newer files/folders over older ones, as the newer are ALWAYS those I want.
I sometime reorganize folders within folders to keep a reasonable number of folders in the parent directories. This means I cannot have a complete synchronization, because I will then have duplicate files and folders.
I am currently trying to remember what I have changed and manually copy the modifications. I sometimes completely delete or overwrite large folders and copy them from the source with YCopy. I also use a duplicate finder to keep track of duplicated files and folders. This is time-consuming, but faster than using the Windows shell to copy them. I have also used Q-Dir and muCommander (which has a great Folder Compare function (like good old Norton Commander), but cannot include subdirectories, as far as I can tell), to facilitate these operations. Some of these apps have filters I can use to exclude certain file types, which is also helpful.
I would like to be able to synchronize any changes that are the newest, preferably including the deleted/moved folders. I know that I can easily copy the moved folders along with the rest, but don’t want the duplications to remain.
I have used trial versions of Syncback SE, Acronis 2012 (I own Acronis 2011), as well as Memeo, and cannot figure out how to configure them to do this. In fact, I lost almost a month’s worth of data (most of which I have recovered) with Memeo (the app I actually paid for!).
I do make regular backups, but not on a daily basis, and not when I am traveling.
I am using Windows 7 Pro, Windows 7 Home, and XP SP2. I have rearranged the folders in my profile in XP to reproduce the structure used in Win 7 to make it smoother. This means that the folders in XP (Pictures, Downloads, Music, etc.) have been removed from “My Documents” and placed in the main user profile.
Can you recommend a solution or partial solution to this predicament? If one of your apps will do this, please include instructions and/or or a sample file with the necessary configuration.
I am fairly expert in software, as I have used OSes from CP/M and AppleDOS, Including DOS from 3.3 to 6 and every version of Windows since 2.1, and have taught Windows since 3.1 and OS 7 through the earliest version of OSX.
Colin,
Thanks for your help. It is peer-to-peer. I don't use the online sync because it seems duplicative, and there is much too much data to upload (asynchronous connection) in any reasonable period of time.
So if I modify a document, it won't replace it on the other box's folder, even though the date stamp and contents have changed?
Why would it be better to drag everything in My Documents into a separate folder (on all three boxes)? Then I would have to delete everything in My Documents (on all three boxes) and copy them back from the Sync folders. The My Documents folder can't be a sync folder?
In addition, I sync my Downloads, Desktop, Favorites, Music and Pictures folders. I would have to create sync folders for all of these and go through the same process for each one!
This arrangement seems extremely unwieldy, especially for such a sophisticated, fairly expensive application. Truth is, I have never found my older versions to be really any more useful for backup than what is built into Windows.
Would love it if I am wrong. Syncback SE seems to be my most viable solution at this point, and their support, even for the trial version is FAST. I only have one day left on my trial version of Acronis 2012.
Nick
The only reason I suggested dragging contents into a defined folder was that during beta testing I kept deleting (accidently) files I wanted to keep, mainly because I would have liked the facility to choose relationships between folders (this is the master, this is a two way etc). I think that where you have (as it is at the moment) a system where any alteration in any of the sync folders propagates it to all others, it is fraught with danger if you use the working folder to contain all files. Just the way I think.
If it was for example a laptop computer logged on to a network out in the field and only required upto date information and the 'base' computer only required new data (so no redundancy) then this sytem is fine. For me, I would only want to add or delete specific files and not neccessarily have that replicated elsewhere. So my photos that I have on my laptop, I would want to sync those to my PC, what I would want to happen is to then delete the photos on my laptop and then the next time I connected have those photos deleted off my PC automatically. To avoid this I would have perhaps on the 'master' PC the photos go to a specific sync folder and then copy them out to a photo folder, to avoid that happening.
By the sounds of what you want to do, this wouldn't be a problem for you, in which case there is no reason why you shouldn't sync the original folders.