Recently, I was tasked by my father to find a synchronization software because we recently upgraded to Windows 7 on the family’s desktop computer. Since his current favourite is no longer in development or seems to work under Windows 7, the choice was either to use a batch file, which my father was not too pleased in using, or to find an alternative for it. And while there are always paid alternatives for syncing files across a network, seeing as we are not very well off, the choice was clear to find a free, open source choice. And to be honest, until now, I have never had a need to look up or find the alternatives for it, since we were expecting to use the XP desktop for a long time to come until we lucked into a Windows 7 license from a family friend. Today I’m going to cover some synchronization tools you could use under Windows . In all my examples and screenshots I’ve taken, C: is the main drive of my laptop, and A: is the mapped drive of my Linux server.
FullSync (6.2 Mb)
FullSync, despite what the comments say, seems to work fine under Windows 7 in my testing, and is extremely easy to set up. You can set up profiles to sync in both directions, to provide a one way exact copy, a backup copy of one folder, or just provide a differential sync. You can also schedule these profiles to run at a certain time, so you don’t have to worry about it. FullSync feels a bit sluggish as well, I found, but that might just be because my laptop isn’t that powerful. It also has the problem of the dual directional sync profile not working as it should have, copying an empty file to the mapped A: drive on my laptop. It works for Windows and Linux by the looks of it, but I didn’t test it under Linux. While my dad decided that FullSync was a great application, he instead decided for the second application that I found.
FreeFileSync (6.3 mb)
FreeFileSync can be installed on Windows, 32bit or 64bit, and works perfectly under Windows 7. It has an option to do real time syncing, while wouldn’t be useful on a slower computer, would no doubt be a great handy option as well. It can detect other files inside the folders, unlike FullSync, so it can also back up subfolders too. I am actually very much impressed with how easy it is to set up FreeFileSync, especially with it’s easy to use and easy to adapt to interface. My dad tried FreeFileSync out and loved it for how powerful it has been with Windows 7, and an added bonus is that it is also cross platform… that’s right, it works for Windows and for Linux. It also seems to be much faster then not only Windows Copy service, but FullSync as well. Personally, FreeFileSync is the present winner of the two, thanks to a great amount of features and the speed in copying, as well as any errors being presented are extremely informative.
However, since everyone’s needs are different, both tools are useful and it is up to the end user to decide which one might be considered better then the other. And now onto what we’ve been waiting for: the winner of the PREVX key. The winner of the PREVX key on the blog is: Christy Sunny. Congratulations, your one year key is on it’s way to you now.
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