- Dec 17, 2001
- 3,566
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I've Googled up quite a number of synchronization tools for Windows 7, but none that quite fit what I want. Hoping somebody here knows the right tool for the job...
I have a flash drive full of Very Important Documents that's used on several different computers. I'd like to find the most efficient possible way to keep it backed up. Ideally, when I plug it into my main workstation (where it's used almost daily), it would automatically push any existing changes on the flash drive into a backup folder and would then automatically sync any further work I do on those documents before ejecting it, without needing me to click anything. If that backup folder could live on my file server so much the better, but I can live with a local copy. The important thing is that if the flash drive dies or gets lost, I lose as little work as possible.
Before anyone suggests it, cloud solutions are not a good solution for me. It's frequently necessary that I be able to hand someone (possibly someone with minimal tech skills) the flash drive to pull files off of it, and logging into a cloud service doesn't work for that. I can elaborate if necessary and I'm open to suggestions, but I'm pretty sure the best bet is simply backing up the flash drive as efficiently as possible.
I've tried Win7's Sync Center, but as far as I can it's hardwired to "pull down" from a network share as a source, not to push up a local disk to a folder or share.
I'm playing around with Microsoft's SyncToy right now, and it will mostly do what I want (after assigning a permanent mount point for the flash drive to avoid drive letter confusion). But it's not real-time. I can write a batch file for it and make it a desktop shortcut, and that's pretty decent. But I'm hoping there's something even better out there that would work in real time and let me be even lazier about backups.
I would be willing to pay $20-$30 for the right tool here if necessary. Any suggestions?
I have a flash drive full of Very Important Documents that's used on several different computers. I'd like to find the most efficient possible way to keep it backed up. Ideally, when I plug it into my main workstation (where it's used almost daily), it would automatically push any existing changes on the flash drive into a backup folder and would then automatically sync any further work I do on those documents before ejecting it, without needing me to click anything. If that backup folder could live on my file server so much the better, but I can live with a local copy. The important thing is that if the flash drive dies or gets lost, I lose as little work as possible.
Before anyone suggests it, cloud solutions are not a good solution for me. It's frequently necessary that I be able to hand someone (possibly someone with minimal tech skills) the flash drive to pull files off of it, and logging into a cloud service doesn't work for that. I can elaborate if necessary and I'm open to suggestions, but I'm pretty sure the best bet is simply backing up the flash drive as efficiently as possible.
I've tried Win7's Sync Center, but as far as I can it's hardwired to "pull down" from a network share as a source, not to push up a local disk to a folder or share.
I'm playing around with Microsoft's SyncToy right now, and it will mostly do what I want (after assigning a permanent mount point for the flash drive to avoid drive letter confusion). But it's not real-time. I can write a batch file for it and make it a desktop shortcut, and that's pretty decent. But I'm hoping there's something even better out there that would work in real time and let me be even lazier about backups.
I would be willing to pay $20-$30 for the right tool here if necessary. Any suggestions?