jenrou Posted July 6, 2012 Share Posted July 6, 2012 Yesterday and today I've moved almost everything off of my laptop, used Sync Toy for the first time to synchronize matching file folder (All SG supplies) on two EHD's. I'm hoping it is safe. It seems to be doing ok, just taking all day! So far I'm at 60,000 files of just collection files, not SS supplies & club, or SG club, or Freebies. It still is not through. Any way to make this faster or safer? To move files from desktop to EHD's after this, should I just copy them, or use Sync Toy? I'll appreciate any tips. I read instructiions, but not sure I understand which is best of the three options. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smiles Posted July 6, 2012 Share Posted July 6, 2012 I started with a direct copy of my folder onto my EHDs, and then have used sync toy to keep up with changes. It's not a perfect copy each time (when I've moved items, it doesn't remove the back-up copies from the original location), but then I haven't spent time fiddling with the options, either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eden Posted July 6, 2012 Share Posted July 6, 2012 Hi Jean I hadn't heard of Sync Toy so jumped on the internet to see what it was! I guess you are backing up your files. I couldn't see if SyncToy continually updates or whether you have to run it each time you want it to sync. If you hae to manually run it then it would be a good idea to do it often. I think that the speed will just be because you have so many files to be copied. I've just bought a year's back up with Crashplan and with more than 78,000 files it says it's going to take a long time (days!). The beauty of this one is that is continues the backup all the time. There is a free version of this but it didn't offer a great deal of storage. Good luck, you won't regret doing a backup! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenrou Posted July 6, 2012 Author Share Posted July 6, 2012 Thanks to both of you for answering. I do keep backups, but I keep a copy of everything on two EHD's and am running this to get rid of duplicates (I hope) and make the folders match. I guess kind of like Briefcase. It swaps back and forth matching, adding, or putting extras in another folder. I'm hoping it works that way. I've always direct copied everything and have many duplicates in stacked folders. I know some of the members on line use Sync Toy, and hope I can get some suggestions as to the best ways to use it. I did a trial file first, and there were things to be deleted. It is hard for me to delete things, so as a result, I've copied folders of collections and zips more than once. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CRS Posted July 6, 2012 Share Posted July 6, 2012 I've never used Sync Toy, but I wanted to wish you luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarbaraC1977 Posted July 6, 2012 Share Posted July 6, 2012 I use SyncToy for backing up the gazillions of icon files I work with here at the office. I've had only good experiences with it, and it's faster for syncing than on the initial copy. On Sync, it's comparing date/time stamps on like-named files, in equivalent folder locations, and only copying the updated ones. It has a nice capability, to create named "sync-sets." So I can use one set to handle backing up icon files to our server, and a similar set to do the same backup to an EHD. I can back up different kinds of files, etc. It is not an auto-scheduled tool; you decide when you want to run it. I've never tried SyncToy for full backups of my computer, but I like it a lot for how I use it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenrou Posted July 7, 2012 Author Share Posted July 7, 2012 Thanks! Sync Toy is still running!!! Over a hundred thousand little files so far. It is putting some in a third file, and swapping the two main files I named. I hope I don't lose anything important! Do I keep the third file I created? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarbaraC1977 Posted July 7, 2012 Share Posted July 7, 2012 SyncToy makes a file that keeps track of all the changes; that may be the file you're seeing. However, since it's so customizable, and I don't know what settings you've configured, I can only guess. I have used SyncToy for a long time on Vista, but now I learn that you can create a "Scheduled Task" in Windows 7, and have SyncToy run as a regular event automatically. Glad I was wrong on that earlier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenrou Posted July 7, 2012 Author Share Posted July 7, 2012 I don't care about scheduling things, but I just selected Syncronize (sp) and it asked about naming a file, so I named one(just something like "all sg files". I selected other matching files on two EHD's to sync. It's still going and going and going...... But it is reporting in the failure column that there are 255 failures, and 10, 000 files in the newly created folder. I just wonder if the date thing will throw some things out since I move things around all of the time. I know I had a lot of duplicates, and on the trial files I ran first, it put a lot of files in the new named file in red, but the two selected files on two EHD's had equal numbers of files when it got through. It asked if I wanted to delete the New named file and I did since it was just a misc. folder. I didn't really understand what I was doing, however. duh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarbaraC1977 Posted July 7, 2012 Share Posted July 7, 2012 The file you named "All SG files" is the name of the "folder pair." You can create different syncs, as I mentioned above, for different sets of files, or different types, and NAME each Folder Pair. Do NOT move the files you're syncing while it's in progress; that WILL cause them to be listed as failures. You can PREVIEW a Sync before you actually run it. RED lines indicate that it's going to delete a file because you deleted it on the source, or overwrite an older copy with a newer one. You can exclude any questionable actions by unchecking them. The Help for Synctoy is pretty good; I recommend it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smiles Posted July 7, 2012 Share Posted July 7, 2012 great info, Barbara! thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenrou Posted July 7, 2012 Author Share Posted July 7, 2012 Yes, thank you Barbara. I value your pc input! I'm not sure I really accomplished much with over twelve hours of syncing these two files. I am still having to go through and get rid of duplicates, stacked folders, zips, etc. So now I am just going through one of the files, getting it right then I'll copy it over or just back it up. I want to be able to use my newest fastest EHD as a work harddrive, with others as backup. Let's hope I don't delete everything like the last time I worked on an EHD. Time for a NEW desktop computor! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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