File Sync software for Windows?

[Gdourado]

Hello, how are you?

A friend of mine went from Mac to PC.

One of the things he is currently searching is a File Sync software, like Superduper or Carbon Copy Cloner on OSX.

The idea is to sync drives and folders for backup purposes.

He need a software to sync from a source drive or folder, to a target drive or folder and do just the incremental changes on the target volume.

 

Any such software on the Windows camp?

 

Thanks.

Cheers!

[Jade]

What about Microsoft's SyncToy?

[Tedster]

Here's a good list:

http://alternativeto.net/software/carbon-copy-cloner/

 

I'd try Clonezilla first.

http://clonezilla.org/

[Guest]

Would BitTorrent Sync be a good option ? I never used it but heard from it a lot.

[Blebekblebek]

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Sync Center

 

windows have sync center

 

but I didn't use it

btw I'm also looking

and not just took recommendation over just because (I can google for that)

I'm looking for something that people actually use

[obsidian1200]

I use a program called FreeFileSync to synchronize drives/folders. It gives you a lot of options like Carbon Copy Cloner, including incremental backup. When I first downloaded it from either Cnet or Sourceforge, it actually tried to install conduit (a check box was present so you didn't have to do that) but if you go to the main site http://www.freefilesync.org/index.phpand download from fosshub (the mirror the dev's site links you to) it does not install anything aside from the program. 

 

Lots of other great options here, I've tried synctoy but found it didn't always work properly, but this was back on Windows 7 and I haven't tried it since I started using FreeFileSync.

[omniomi]

One thing people are missing/forgetting is that Windows has a native tool called Robocopy. It can copy files from one place to another, mirror a folder to a remote location, and so on. You can easily setup a Windows Task Scheduler daily job to mirror C:\Somefolder to \\someserver\Somefolder or you could setup a job to copy any new files from X:\SomeOtherFolder to \\someserver\someotherfolder.

 

Two practical examples:

 

Mirroring

 

• Microsoft SQL Server does daily backups at 5PM to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.SQL2008R2\MSSQL\Backup\MyDatabase
• MSSQL has a cleanup job to only keep 4 days on disk.
• A daily Task Scheduler job that runs at 6PM runs the following command:
  robocopy "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.SQL2008R2\MSSQL\Backup\MyDatabase" "\\backupserver\MSSQL\MyDatabase" /MIR /R:0 /LOG+:c:\backup\robocopy.txt /NP

In this scenario backupserver will always have the same 4 database backups as the local folder on the DB server as it's a direct mirror. It copies any new files in the local folder to the remote folder and deletes any files in the remote folder that don't exist in the local folder.  If there was no clean-up job on the MSSQL server it would store a new file every day and nothing would ever be deleted.

 

File Move

 

• Every day around 4PM you save a diary of the day to C:\MyDiary 
• A daily Task Scheduler job that runs at 6PM runs the following command:
  robocopy C:\MyDiary \\backupserver\MyDiary /MOV /R:0 /LOG+:c:\backups\robocopy.txt

In this scenario the files will only exist on the backupserver. Any new files in C:\MyDiary are moved to \\backupserver\ and then deleted from the local location. If you used robocopy C:\MyDiary \\backupserver\MyDiary /E all of the files would exist in both locations instead of deleting the local copy.

 

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/cc733145.aspx 

 

You can also put robocopy commands in a batch script and run them manually whenever you feel like it. It also doesn't need to be remote... You can robocopy mirror or copy between drives as well for example using robocopy c:\FolderToBackup x:\BackupLocation /MIR /NP