Saturday, May 09, 2009  

[New SyncToy!]

I've been using SyncToy 1.4 for my data backup for a long time. What I liked about this software is that it's lightweight, simple, and does exactly what I wanted it to do. Other file/folder synchronization software on the market are just too complicated. All I want, is for folder A to be the same as folder B. I don't need the bells and whistles.

But there is one problem with SyncToy 1.4. If you delete a folder (with files), upon running the software, it recognises that the files are gone and will delete them for you. However, it does not delete the folder. So while changes in file/data are reflected, the folder structure is not. Some people don't mind, but it drives me crazy.

Microsoft released a new version of SyncToy last year. I didn't realise it until recently. I know they had a new beta version, but I wasn't about to install a beta Microsoft product on my system. Now it's final, so I tried it this morning. Compared to version 1.4, version 2.0 is almost completely the same, although they removed two types of sync actions (which I don't use anyway so it doesn't matter to me), they've made improvements in other areas. Folder deletes are recognised at last, and they've tweaked their folder-id structure such that after synchronizing, the folder sizes of the two folders are the same. It was different in the past because an additional SyncToy file was created and that file had a different file-size for the same folder pair.

It was a 3.5/5 star software in the past. Now it's a 5/5 star software in my book.

For those of you getting by without a proper data backup process, get another hard disk (they are dirt cheap these days), and install SyncToy 2.0. Run it every once in a while and your files would be safe in the event of a hard disk crash.

^^^ by Locksley @ 11:58 AM. 0 comments.
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