Synctoy: Suggested Improvements for the next release

[Guest]

Hello, I'm an avid user of Synctoy and find it quite useful. However, it is
apparent that it has some shortfalls. I understand the program is designed to
be light and easy to use but I feel it misses out on some important and
simple functionality which would improve the utility a great deal.

1) An option to have Synctoy automatically run on insertion of a removable
storage device such as a usb flash drive.

Feel free to add your own as I hope this thread is looked at and drawn upon
for ideas as to what to include in its next release.

 

[Guest]

Feel free to add your own as I hope this thread is looked at and drawn upon
for ideas as to what to include in its next release.

1) Allow changing the order in which folder pairs run. This is a problem for
me when doing an 'all folder pairs' and one folder depends upon another being
done first.

2) Allow renaming folder pairs without having to delete and recreate them.

 

[Guest]

1) How about fixing the memory leaks... SyncToy 1.4 starts out using 19MB of
RAM, no biggie here. By the time my large folder pairs are done syncing it's
up to over 600MB, that is just silly!!

2) Offer some sort of workaround for the path too long error. Can't it copy
the file to a temporary directory that's half way to the destination then
move the file from the temporary location to the ultimate destination. Yah,
it's more reads and writes but at least it would get the job done. Besides,
it should be a fairly rare occurance, in one of my folder pairs that has over
40,000 files only 10 have paths that are too long, I'd be willing to take a
few performance hits to get the files copied successfully.

3) Fix the problem where the transfer stops if the status window is
minimized. I just stumbled across this one the other day, but it's really
annoying. Why should I have to keep the status up in order to run a sync?

That's all I can think of for the time being but hopefully these will be
seen and someone will comment on them.

 

[Guest]

Great little tool, just started using it. Ran into a limitation with "Error:
Path too long. Copying ....". I expected that it would support the full
Windows filepath \ filespec, being a Windows program... A nice improvement
would to be address long paths. thanks.

 

[Guest]

Feel free to add your own as I hope this thread is looked at and drawn upon
for ideas as to what to include in its next release.

-an option for 'overwrite read only files'
-if possible, EFS improvements for network copies if possible
-solve several issues if synchronization is done among more than 2 PCs (e.g.
one USB disk is synchronized to several desktops and notebooks)

 

[db]

https://support.microsoft.com/common/survey.aspx?scid=sw;en;1208

Feel free to add your own as I hope this thread is looked at and drawn upon
for ideas as to what to include in its next release.

-an option for 'overwrite read only files'
-if possible, EFS improvements for network copies if possible
-solve several issues if synchronization is done among more than 2 PCs (e.g.
one USB disk is synchronized to several desktops and notebooks)

 

[Guest]

Feel free to add your own as I hope this thread is looked at and drawn upon
for ideas as to what to include in its next release.

1) Ability to make/run groups of folder pairs. Like RunAll: Run
MyGroupOfFolderPairs1, MyGroupOfFolderPairs2.

2) I too would like the option to over-write read-only files. (At the
moment, I have to run a separate script to make all destination files
writeable, which means I lose the details of which were read-only and which
weren't)

3) Ability to mark some files as not for syncing, (either by full file name,
or by pattern e.g. !".tmp"

 

[Guest]

Add directory expansion at run-time. Eg. ..\users$\%username%\personal files
to ..\user$\jblogs\personal files .

Cheers
Roger

 

[Philip]

Another request for an option to over-write read-only files. Specifically, when using Echo to create a backup, I would want read-only files in the right folder replaced by newer versions of the same file from the left folder.

 

[Guest]

I second suggestions to:
1) exclude groups of files or filenames (to exclude thumnail or index files
that are not important to copy)
2) to be able to create groups
3) to be able to run minimized

 

[Guest]

A possibility to get a log would be nice. It would make me feel more secure
that everything is working as it should.
I use it to Echo my co workers C to a NetHDD

 

[Guest]

I would love to be able to install SyncToy to a USB drive to use the app as a
mobile utility. It would be very helpful when getting ready to slick a
co-workers computer and reinstall the OS, or upgrade the OS.

 

[Guest]

Right, so let me answer my own question.
1. Find a computer you have administrator rights on.
2. Make sure SyncToy is not installed on this computer.
3. Download the SyncToy installer to a USB drive
4. Run the installer. (if you already installed SyncToy on this computer it
will ask you to remove or repair at this point. That does not help you).
5. When it asks for a drive to install, create a new folder, on your USB
drive (flash drive works too)
6. After the install, select finish and eject the usb drive/thumbdrive
7. Plug thumb drive into the computer you don't have administrator rights to.
8. Copy the entire folder to the new computer. Or, just run it from your
flash drive.
9. Voila! it works. I haven't had any problems in the first hour of using
it. That could change I suppose, but it is working just fine. It seems to
meet all the criteria of a portable app.

 

[Guest]

Support for read-only files, encrypted files, folder pair rename and file
name based exclusion is definitely in the plans for the next release. Other
asks on this thread, we will need to evaluate further. Thanks for the
feedback.

Ashish
SyncToy Developer

 

[Guest]

How about an option to ignore hidden files? BTW, thumbs.db is hidden, so
this would take care of that too.

 

[Guest]

Yep, that's in the plans as well. And we will always ignore desktop.ini and
thumbs.db files, even if you haven't set the hidden option.

-Ashish

 

[Guest]

Bugs/improvements:

1) All dates are in US format - should use .Net formatting to use regional
date format.

2) Run on x64 (e.g. Longhorn)

3) Make subdirectories excludeable using wildcards - now you have to specify
all folders - and add a folder if a new subfolder appears

4) If you start a run minimized (synctoy -Rxx), it crashes

5) Change the configuration from a serialized object to an XML-based format,
so configuration can be easily changed from script (the current method is
hardcore, but possible)

6) File type exclusions

7) File size exclusions

 

[Guest]

it already creates a log - My Documents\SyncToyData\SyncToyLog

 

[Guest]

Bug/Improvement

- The possibility to work with empty folders
- diferent schedules for diferent sync pairs

 

[Guest]

Yup... I agree... this error needs to be addressed