Synctoy: Suggested Improvements for the next release

[Guest]

Bug - Fails to copies filenames with ~1

Great utility, but I would welcome to removal of the "Error: File not found"
whenever the file name includes ~1. The Visual Studio 6 download CD2 is full
of these filenames.

 

[Guest]

I would like to see a couple of things in a quality sync tool...

1. The autosync to a recognized USB device that's been requested over and
over again is a definite plus. WiFi device functionality would be cool too so
that a wireless laptop could be autosynced as soon as it's seen on the
network.

2. Having the ability to run Synctoy as a Service so it can run in the
background regardless of who is logged in to the PC would make Synctoy more
user friendly.

3. Real-time sync would dramatically expand the functionality of Synctoy by
eliminating the manual activation. This could give Synctoy the ability to
function as a software base RAID/real-time backup applet.

 

[Guest]

I agree with most of everyone's suggestions--some have been some of mine as
well. I have one to add, though: whenever SyncToy echoes the left folder to
the right, if some folders on the left were deleted, the contents of those
deleted folders are deleted on the right, but the not the folders themselves.
So what I'm left with is extra folders on the right that clutter the area,
and I have to manually delete the folders oen by one. This can be tedious,
and if I sync a lot of data in one go, I might not be able to track down
where all of the empty folders are. I imagine that the same thing happens
whichever way the syncing goes (left to right or right to left).

 

[Guest]

1) One of the when-to-run options should be "After connection to ..." where
"..." represents all the servers associated with the set of folder pairs to
be run.

2) When a sync fails -- e.g., because the server could not be found, the
GUI should tell you. As it is, it tells me that it last backed things up at
the time it TRIED. Only after I delve into the log do I find that it did not
work.

3) It needs another when-to-run option: Upon shutdown.

Items 1 and 3 might be Windows (XP) Scheduler problems, but Item 2 should
definitely be included in any future releases.

Otherwise a marvelous piece of work. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

 

[Guest]

I also find it annoying how new subfolders added to excluded parent folders
become included by default in a backup job. For instance, iTunes uses an
"AlbumArt" folder, which I don't want to back up. I excluded the entire
folder and its subfolders; but every time I download a new song from iTunes,
a new subfolder is added to "AlbumArt," and SyncToy includes the new
subfolder for the next run. I wish there were an option to have excluded
parent folders (and all of their subfolders) stay excluded, even if new
content is added to the parent folder, unless I tell SyncToy otherwise.

 

[Guest]

Oh, and it's also annoying how some files beginning with ~$ are always
included because if there are many of those kinds of files, it takes me a
while to uncheck all of them. Since those files are of the same type (i.e.,
..docx) as the files they seem to be copies of, I cannot tell SyncToy to
include the original document and not the copy. And, of course, if I were to
*exclude* the copies (in SyncToy 2), I'd be excluding the originals as well.

In addition, it would be nice if SyncToy 2.0 could use shadow copies of
files so that we don't have to close the files in order for them to be backed
up.

Sorry if I'm mentioning things already said.

 

[Guest]

a resizeable directory selection window (for long paths)

 

[Guest]

copying of hardlinks, symlinks as hardlinks or symlinks

 

[Guest]

copying of hardlinks, symlinks as hardlinks or symlinks

For hardlinks, only one copy of the source should be made if it is pointed
to by multiple items in the source list

 

[Guest]

alternate/configurable location for SyncToyPairs, et al.

The current location is inappropriate. I have a common personal
network server share that I use for My Documents across multiple machines.
Since the SyncToy settings are stored there, SyncToy installed on two
different machines use the same Directory Pair list, which is unnecessarily
restrictive.

Perhaps LocalApplicationData is more suitable (since ApplicationData is
sometimes shared in networked environments, too). This data hardly qualifies
as a "document" that I edit, anyway. Moreover, it might be a good idea to be
able to select a .bin file to save to explictly as well. How would I edit
the file if in a future incarnation of the toy, it could run as a service, or
at least a scheduled background task under the SYSTEM account? How would I
edit that file, and how would the service know where to find it?

 

[Guest]

This has been fixed in the SyncToy 2.0 Beta release which can now be
downloaded from microsoft.com/downloads. The new location for the folder
pairs file is now under the user's Local Settings folder. Please try out the
new release and let us know how it works out for you.

-Ashish Shah
SyncToy Development

 

[Guest]

Which window is that - the one thats launched from the folder pair creation
wizard or the one that allows you to de-select sub-folders from sync?

- Ashish Shah
SyncToy Development

 

[Guest]

Jack, glad to know that you like the tool. We currently don't have plans to
directly address 1 and 3 below, although should be able to use the Windows
scheduler for 3 (and maybe 1 - although I haven't looked). The new version of
SyncToy (2.0 Beta - download available from microsoft.com/downloads) works
much better with the system scheduler because we have created a command-line
wrapper that doesn't require any UI - you can even run syncs when logged off.

Regarding error reporting, the new version has more error reporting
capabilities w.r.t single item failures, etc. It may work better for your
error scenarios.

Please try it out and let us know how it work for you.

Thanks
Ashish Shah
SyncToy Development

 

[Guest]

Chris, we have definitely resolved your first two items in 2.0: new folders
appearing under excluded sub-folders will stay excluded, and folder deletes
will propagate from left to right normally so you don't end up with all these
ghost empty folders lying around. Please download the 2.0 Beta from
microsoft.com/downloads and try it out.

Regarding the 3rd item, we now have the ability to exclude files by
wild-carded file names so you may be able to use that to get what you want.

Thanks,
Ashish Shah
SyncToy Development

 

[Guest]

David, this should be fixed now with new 2.0 Beta release (download from
microsoft.com/downloads). Please try it out and let us know how it works out.

Thanks
Ashish Shah
SyncToy Development

 

[Guest]

Cristiano, both are now possible with the SyncToy 2.0 Beta release. Please
download it and try it out. You should be able to use the SyncToyCmd.exe
command line wrapper to schedule individual folder pairs on different
schedules using the Windows scheduler.

Thanks,
Ashish Shah
SyncToy Development

 

[Guest]

Hi,

2, 3, 4 and 6 are now fixed with the SyncToy 2.0 Beta release. Please try it
out and let us know how it works.

Ashish Shah
SyncToy Development

 

[Guest]

Hi,

Your 1st and 3rd suggestions are now fixed in the SyncToy 2.0 Beta release.
As far as running minimized goes - we took a different approach with that.
The new version includes a command-line non-UI wrapper which can be used to
run folder pairs from the command line or the task scheduler. Please try it
out and let us know how it works.

Ashish Shah
SyncToy Development

 

[Guest]

Add back feature to prevent sync of empty folder maybe as a checkbox.

 

[Tony G]

Regarding the quoted text, I am new to SyncToy, just installed, came here to
see the latest comments. I was horrified to see the .dat files stored in the
root of the source folders. Folders are for our data, not metadata for
tools. Can't the .dat files be stored somewhere else?

Also regarding editing files, since it was a recent post - I was really
surprised to see a .bin file being used when these days Microsoft is all
about XML. It would be nice (though equally horrifying to some) if we could
write our .NET applications to update the config file rather than executing a
stream of command-line operations. Seems like the technology is moving
backward.

Finally - I have SQL Server 2003 and MS Access and other databases on our
systems - I was surprised that we also needed to load the Compact edition for
this, and while I understand the syntactical issues it would have been nice
to have had an option about which dataset to use - perhaps in the future?

Thanks!