MrLudwig Posted March 24, 2008 Posted March 24, 2008 Hi, Does anyone know of any free software that will silently and automatically mirror the contents of a folder on one machine to a folder on another, preferably in real time (or near real time)? Thanks.
SYNACK Posted March 24, 2008 Posted March 24, 2008 Windows built in offline files option may be what you are looking for if the machines are connected via a network. Just share out the folder on one machine and set up the other computer to use offline files (right click on the folder and click "make avalible offline") Whenever the two computers can see each other they can synchronize the contents of the folders. You can change the offline folders setting to sync periodically or on logon and log off. If the system is online and can see the 'server computer' (can be XP) it will just work on the shared copy then sync when you log off or tell it to.
Michael Posted March 24, 2008 Posted March 24, 2008 An alternative (within the same workstation/server) would be to configure software RAID 1. With two physical hard disks installed, the same information is copied to both drives offering some redundancy in the event one of the drives fail.
Michael Posted March 24, 2008 Posted March 24, 2008 Another solution could be to create a batch file with the xcopy command. You could schedule this to run every 10 minutes (for example) using Scheduled Tasks.
SteveMC Posted March 24, 2008 Posted March 24, 2008 Hi, Does anyone know of any free software that will silently and automatically mirror the contents of a folder on one machine to a folder on another, preferably in real time (or near real time)? Thanks. I've used Microsoft's Robocopy utility before - not sure if it'll run completely silently, but it's a command-line utility, so there's probably ways to shut it up. It's short for 'Robust file Copy', and has a huge number of options to do with mirroring, the intervals at which it carries out the checks, exclusions, copying of NTFS permissions etc. It's a free utility, downloadable as part of lots of the Resource Kits. Wikipedia has a good page on it, and the download page on MS is here. Stephen 1
srochford Posted March 24, 2008 Posted March 24, 2008 Hi, Does anyone know of any free software that will silently and automatically mirror the contents of a folder on one machine to a folder on another, preferably in real time (or near real time)? Thanks. What OS? Where are the machines? If it's Windows Server 2000 or 2003 then you can use DFS; if it's 2003 R2 or 2008 then you can use DFSR which is much better and gives pretty much near real-time replication. "where" the machines are matters because DFS has a replication schedule - by default I think it's every 15 minutes for machines which are not on the same subnet (or, strictly, site) but it's pretty much instant for machines on the same site (as defined in your AD sites)
RobC Posted March 24, 2008 Posted March 24, 2008 I would suggest taking a look at AllwaySync. I've used it in the past for folder syncronisation and it works really well. I just can't remember if it can be scheduled/automatic.
MrLudwig Posted March 24, 2008 Author Posted March 24, 2008 (edited) Thanks for the suggestions. I'm really after something that will update the folder contents almost instantly, rather than on a schedule. Something similar to Instant Replicator from Exare (http://www.exare.com/content/view/12/34/), but for free. Robocopy comes close (with the /MIR /MON:1 /MOT:1 /E switches), but it seems to rescan the whole folder tree every time a change is detected, no matter how small that change is. This can take quite a while on large folders, which is not really ideal. What OS? Where are the machines? Primarily it will be between an XP desktop machine and a 2K3 server, but I would also like to be able to sync folders between the XP desktop and an XP laptop as well. I would suggest taking a look at AllwaySync. I've used this in the past, but as far as I can remember, it doesn't sync in near real time, but rather at logon/logoff. Edited March 24, 2008 by MrLudwig
RobC Posted March 24, 2008 Posted March 24, 2008 Ok, just downloaded Allwaysync to take a look again. It does have have a feature to watch for changes and replicate them, although it does insist on a delay of a minute from the last change before replicating. Not sure if that is of any use to you... 1
MrLudwig Posted March 24, 2008 Author Posted March 24, 2008 Ok, just downloaded Allwaysync to take a look again. It does have have a feature to watch for changes and replicate them, although it does insist on a delay of a minute from the last change before replicating. Not sure if that is of any use to you... Thanks RobC, I may have to take another look at Allwaysync.
mattx Posted March 24, 2008 Posted March 24, 2008 Rsync / Deltacopy http://www.gaztronics.net/rsync.php
Polski Posted February 25, 2009 Posted February 25, 2009 I use "Foldersynch", it can be run from a script and updates when new files are added to the source. 1
ricki Posted February 26, 2009 Posted February 26, 2009 HI Have a look at this Configuring and Using DFS Replication Richard 1
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