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Using SyncToy 2.1 to Synchronise two external hard drives in Windows - Printable Version

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Using SyncToy 2.1 to Synchronise two external hard drives in Windows - Mark - 05-02-2012


Using SyncToy 2.1 to Synchronise two external hard drives in Windows

SyncToy 2.1 is a free application that synchronises files and folders between locations. Version: 2.1 Date Published: 11/24/2009

System requirements
Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003

Microsoft .NET Framework v2.0
1GHz CPU
512MB RAM

More information and download
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=15155


In this example I'm syncing two external USB hard drives, both attached to a Windows 2003 server. The way this is set up is that the Y:\ drive is shared on the network but is synced locally with the Z drive.


Steps
  • Go to the link above, download SyncToy and run through the installer.


[Image: 001.png]


  • Open SyncToy and Create a New Folder Pair

[Image: 002.png]


  • In my example I'm syncing the root of two disks, not folders, but it works the same.

[Image: 003.png]


  • There are 3 options available, Syncronize, Echo and Contribute. A short explanation is next to each one when you click.
    Syncronize basically keeps both of the disks the same, like a RAID 1.

[Image: 004.png]


  • Click change options and Untick "Save overwritten files in the Recycle Bin" and tick "Exclude system files"

[Image: 005.png]


  • Click Preview at the bottom to see what will happen when you run the sync.

[Image: 006.png]


  • The error you see there was because it was trying to copy System Volume Information, (hence ticking exclude system files above)

[Image: 007.png]


  • Now to automate the sync. Open Task Scheduler / Scheduled Tasks.

[Image: 008.png]


  • Make a new daily task.

[Image: 009.png]


  • In the end, I ended up making a one liner batch script and just pointed task scheduler to run it.

[Image: 010.png]


  • See the script here. I've also set it so that the output of the sync will be saved in to a file called log.txt in the program files folder of SyncToy.

[Image: 011.png]


  • If you've set the task to run every 12 hours, I've told it to stop after 11 hours if it hasn't finished. I later changed this to 11 hours, 50 mins.

[Image: 012.png]


  • Here's what's in the log file. This will change with each sync.

[Image: 013.png]



I had to do something like this because you cannot RAID 1 external USB drives.. It works surprisingly well.




RE: Using SyncToy 2.1 to Synchronise two external hard drives in Windows - Zacharius - 09-02-2012

Great guide!I've wondered how to do that for quite some time now!