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Thread: Software for synchronizing data across drives

  1. #1
    Basically lazy robd's Avatar
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    Software for synchronizing data across drives

    Well, I got my new PC set up and RAID is not working. It would let me install Windows but then gave me the BSOD whenever I tried to start up. Could not be bothered trying to fix it and opted to have the two 500GB drives I have as standard drives. I have partioned them with partitions for System, Data, Media and Images and I plan to use Ghost to take regular images of the system drive and store them in the Images partitions on both disks. I plan to keep data and media that I want to be persistent across reimaging of the system partition on the Data and Media partitions. However I would like to be able to backup these partitions regularly - I could just Ghost them I guess but that's a bit of a bind to do regularly when all that may have changed is a few MP3s and videos. Ideally I want software that can monitor a partition on one drive and replicate any file changes to a partition on another drive plus possibly allow backups to DVD-R when I have added another 4.7 GB of data to the drive so that I have external backups too.

    Anyone recommend anything for this kind of situation?

    Edit: Running XP Home SP3
    Last edited by robd; 2nd-July-2008 at 10:16 AM.

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    Re: Software for synchronizing data across drives

    SyncToy - free download from the MS site is for exactly this purpose. There is a beta of the 2.0 version that's been available for ages and is pretty stable AFAIK. Expect you could set it to run from a shortcut or using the task scheduler.

    Oopss, missed the last sentence, it wouldn't do the DVD backups too or monitor for changes. However monitoring for changes might not be such a good thing if you overwrite a file and then realise the mistake only to find the backup has just sync'd the change straight away...
    Last edited by Mr Darcy; 2nd-July-2008 at 10:27 AM. Reason: Slight misread of original post.

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    Registered User Beowulf's Avatar
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    Re: Software for synchronizing data across drives

    Acronis True Image perhaps?

    I've used it for something similar before.. but maybe I've got the jist of your problem incorrect.

  4. #4
    Commercial Operator onkar's Avatar
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    Re: Software for synchronizing data across drives

    I have used SyncToy, and it works very well.

    Also I have used several versions of rsync for windows. Which you can schedule to do daily/weekly backups (either full or incremental).

    Onkar

  5. #5
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    Re: Software for synchronizing data across drives

    Whilst your hardware raid isn't functional , what about software raid ? This won't work on the system partition (leastways not without some registry hacking) but will work fine on any other partition. . [Note] - just realised you're using Home edition which probably won;t give you the options in disk managment to do this - Xp Pro will , or again a registry hack!

  6. #6
    Registered User Keefy's Avatar
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    Re: Software for synchronizing data across drives

    I'm not a huge fan of SyncToy, I've found it rather unstable in the past and a pig to schedule, plus you need the .Net framework for it to run. I've tried several of the sync solutions on the net, many seem to use a pretty standard sync engine and just put some branding on it. It depends whether you want active sync, I have seen something that runs as a service and does on-the-fly sync but I can't remember which one that was

    The one I've personally settled on is GoodSync, it's about £18 but worth it IMHO, a free trial version is available. It's no hassle, it works, regular updates, good support. I've got several jobs set up in it, some are scheduled to back up to my network drive, some I use to sync over to laptops.

    YMMV

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