Sync Content between Drives?

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Posted by wayne ruffner (Questions: 4, Answers: 49)
Asked on July 8, 2014 6:10 am
11823 Views

I've got a NAS and a portable HD. I want to protect/copy/duplicate the music files between them as my collection grows. What seems to me a simple proposition is a big PITA...

I've been using TreeComp to compare the two collections and handle the updates directory by directory, but I'm hoping for something that can just handle the whole thing mostly unattended.

I'm not concerned with time/date stamps, size or anything else beyond simple file presence. Anyone know of a tool cool enough to handle this simple job?

Thanks!
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Posted by Captain Packrat (Questions: 1, Answers: 19)
Answered On July 9, 2014 8:49 pm

For many years I have used a product called SyncBack. In addition to more traditional backups, it can mirror (copy changes from A to B) or synchronize (copy changes from A to B and from B to A). You can set it to run on a schedule or manually.

They have three versions available, SyncBackFree, which should be adequate for your needs, and two paid versions, SyncBackSE and SyncBackPro which add features like backing up to DVD, Google Drive or FTP.

You can get the free version from http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html

  • Not the most intuitive thing to set up, but once done it worked wonderfully. Thanks!

    (wayne ruffner at July 13, 2014 12:36 pm)
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Posted by randy fischer (Questions: 0, Answers: 1)
Answered On July 28, 2014 2:55 am

If you're comfortable with the command line and can install tools with MacPorts or homebrew, I'd recommend rsync. (Versions exist for windows using the cygwin tools, and linux, of course).

Then sync things from your local maching to the remote, and vice-versa

rsync --archive --update mydir remote:mydir

rsync --archive --update remote:mydir mydir

You can put these into the mac/unix scheduler, crontab, and run them every few hours. It's extremely efficient at transferring once you've established a copy. I use it to keep 2 TB synced from home over my internet connection to an offsite backup at work.

There's a lot to tinker with, though, to get this right.
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Posted by mick (Questions: 0, Answers: 2)
Answered On August 9, 2014 11:59 am

For Windows, I've found AllwaySync http://allwaysync.com/ a good solution.

Simple graphical interface for basic syncing, but a powerful set of options for fully customizing multiple different sync jobs.

And there's even a portable version that you can install on your external drive and have available on any PC you plug into.

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