FREEFILESYNC USER MANUAL VERIFICATION
FREEFILESYNC USER MANUAL FREE

FREEFILESYNC USER MANUAL FREE

This is a free syncing application that is a part of Microsoft’s PowerToys series. Here, Microsoft has released its own sync tool called SyncToy. Can you please elaborate on the paths and setting you use to set up to: (1) to sync my laptop’s data files in “real time” (actually with a short delay) to an internal resident clone drive (a bootable backup system drive), (2) to maintain versioned backup copies of all the files that FreeFileSync updates/replaces/deletes when syncing to the clone drive, and (3) to maintain an external backup of most of my system drive.As for synchronization, it is usually related to cloud storage services, for example, Dropbox or OneDrive, but you can also sync your files or folders locally. Hello “A different Martin”, I am intrigued by your FreeFileSync setup. I hope this isn’t a case of ignorance being bliss. Anyway, the short answer is that, to my knowledge, the FreeFileSync routines I have set up haven’t resulted in any file corruption so far, including in deeply nested folders.

FREEFILESYNC USER MANUAL VERIFICATION

As FreeFileSync’s help section on Expert Settings explains, copy verification relies on system features external to FreeFileSync and cannot be relied upon 100%, but it’s probably better than nothing. I haven’t thought out the real-world implications on a heavily trafficked corporate network, but I feel like the developers should probably have exposed the global copy-verification setting in the program’s main interface (Tools Options) instead of making home users dig for it in a configuration file, and possibly add separate copy-verification settings for batch jobs and individual folder pairs. (And if they did, versioned backups would hopefully offer a recovery path that isn’t too painful.) Incidentally, one of the people I set this up for has deeply nested folders, long paths, and long file names, to the extent that it caused problems with 32-bit copying/backup programs. To my knowledge, they haven’t run into any corrupted files after a year or so of frequent syncing. However, I have also used FreeFileSync to sync data between two different computers (e.g., desktop and laptop) whose users actually do routinely access the same data files on both computers. With my set-up, I almost never have reason to try to load the copies FreeFileSync makes on my resident clone and external backup drive, so I’m not a good benchmark. I personally use FreeFileSync (1) to sync my laptop’s data files in “real time” (actually with a short delay) to an internal resident clone drive (a bootable backup system drive), (2) to maintain versioned backup copies of all the files that FreeFileSync updates/replaces/deletes when syncing to the clone drive, and (3) to maintain an external backup of most of my system drive. Have you checked all of above softwares for data corruption issues and deep directory files sync success? I now use plain backup software. While it worked pretty well from the start - with a single FreeFileSync batch file and a single RealTimeSync task to trigger it - there were regularly conflicts that needed to be resolved manually, and the backup files generated by a sync weren’t guaranteed to themselves get synced before, e.g., a laptop was disconnected from the network and taken somewhere else. I’ve been using FreeFileSync for a couple of years now, on my own computer, on my dad’s small home network, and on a friend’s small home network. It’s actively maintained and developed and updates seem to come out every three or four months or so. If you don’t donate, you get installers with bundleware that you can opt out of. Mike Cabolet: FreeFileSync actually is free donation-ware.

The bundled adware business is distasteful - they seem to be alternating between OpenCandy and whatever Martin mentioned in the article - but if you get tricked into installing it (they got me once, on an update), Malwarebytes Anti-Malware free can probably take it out.

Freefilesync user manual