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SyncToy v1.4 Released

With over 33,000 total views, my August 9, 2005 announcement about the release of SyncToy is one of my more popular posts. According to Sean Kelley, your comments to that post helped drive some of the fixes, features, and enhancements that have gone into more recent versions. If you ask me, this is a great example of direct community engagement via blogs.

Yesterday, we released version 1.4 of SyncToy with improved Windows Vista compatibility. If you're looking for a free and easy way to intelligently backup and synchronize your mountain of digital files, check this one out.

The team continues to ask for your feedback to enhance future versions. Of course, you can always leave feedback on my blog, but the Windows XP Photos newsgroup and the online feedback survey (available from the SyncToy Help menu) are probably a bit more direct.

Published Tuesday, October 31, 2006 10:44 PM by mswanson
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# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

As I mentioned in the SyncToy 1.2 blog, SyncToy is still useless for backups. It does not delete folders on the right when using echo. My backup eventually becomes a garbled mess. What a shame. So many people complained about this on the internet. I still don't understand why folders are not "sync'd" correctly when using Echo.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 10:54 PM by Frank

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

Synctoy always produces an error when used in a batch file, so I can't schedule it for overnight.  I had tried having a batch file to sync multiple folder pairs - each one with its own -R parameter - and it never got past the first one.  Yeah, I suppose I could schedule a separate action for each folder pair, but wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft's own utility actually worked on Microsoft's own system and Microsoft's own release of .Net?  

Thursday, December 28, 2006 9:10 AM by Harlan

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

Can't seem to schedule sync tasks on Vista since there is no executable called "SyncToy.exe"

Wednesday, February 28, 2007 9:51 PM by Scott

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

Harlan,

Are the PC's that are getting an error when you run synctoy with a batch file using 800x600 resolution?  If so, try increasing the resolution (i.e. 1024x786) and see if it still fails.

Sunday, March 11, 2007 3:42 PM by KDub

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

I have found the same problem as Frank (posted Tuesday, November 14, 2006 10:54 PM) in that deleted/renamed folders in left are not removed from the right, when using Echo.  Are MS going to fix this problem?

Friday, March 23, 2007 5:49 PM by Tony Whitmarsh

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

Tony/Frank,

Your voice has been heard and we are addressing these issues for v2.0.  Thanks for your feedback.

Sean Kelley

Microsoft

Data Replication and Synchronization

Program Manager

Thursday, April 05, 2007 1:10 PM by Sean Kelley

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

Hi,

Great tool, but on my new Vista installation its's throwing an error ("*** Exception: Showing a modal dialog box or form when the application is not running in UserInteractive mode is not a valid operation. Specify the ServiceNotification or DefaultDesktopOnly style to display a notification from a service application.") when scheduled using Task Scheduler.

Is this what others are seeing in their logfile?

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 5:28 AM by Les

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

I see this too. Is this a bug or a configuration issue? I have it scheduled under a domain admins account, which is the same account under which I configured the folder pairs.

What gives? I've got a customer who is growing very impatient.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 12:26 PM by Marty Henderson

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

hi Mike,

thanks for a tool works as advertised for the most part, except that it reported a few files as "not found".

The files do very much exist and perhaps the only thing i could find was that SyncToy was perhaps running into some sort of path length limit. the 8 files reported as "not found" are all in 8.3 "dos name" format in a path that is 116 characters long. seems like 128 chars is the underlying limit (116 + 11 + 1(period)) .

Anyone know of this being a known limit/bug??

Tuesday, May 29, 2007 2:27 AM by kage

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

I use this v1.3 daily to sync my laptop and desktop. Only two bugs: 1. Echo not deleting folders on right side 2. PDF sometimes give access denied so won't copy.  Any thoughts?

Tuesday, June 19, 2007 11:03 PM by Bryan

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

Hi folks!

When will SyncToy 2.0 be released? I´m also desperately waiting for the eliminationon of the "doesn´t-delete-empty-folders-bug".

If possible, please inform me under dirk.j.drews@gmx.de

Regards - Dirk

Tuesday, June 26, 2007 4:38 AM by Dirk-J. Drews

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

I hate to say this, but I gave SyncToy a shot on Vista and, while it worked most of time and is pretty to look at, I found it to be VERY BLOATED AND SLOW—especially when working with lots of files (over 15000).  As a matter of fact, and this is more prevalent when deleting lots of files, SyncToy frequently used tons of CPU time, over 1.5GB of RAM and brought Vista “to its knees” while severely thrashing the hard drive.  The system was being burdened “like nothing I’ve ever seen before”—I couldn’t even move the mouse!  Honestly, I was impressed Vista did not crash.

To the developers of SyncToy, give up what you are doing and base this off of Robocopy or something similar—or create a pretty front-end to Robocopy.  Ever since my recurring SyncToy nightmares and finding out that Robocopy is built into Vista, I quickly uninstalled SyncToy and have never looked back.

I guess the idea of SyncToy was nice.

Friday, July 13, 2007 4:24 AM by Daniel Melameth

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

We also have the problem of files and folders not being deleted with the Echo action.  Any news yet when version 2.0 will be released?

Monday, July 30, 2007 6:03 PM by Gary Ostergaard

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

I use this v1.4 daily to sync my laptop and desktop i hjave one bug, synchronize das not deleting folders on right side.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 9:24 AM by Roy van der Velden

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

mode echo deletes files instead of overwriting them when files are updated on the left.

This software is dangerous

Alfred

Thursday, August 30, 2007 9:43 AM by Alfred

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

I also am having the problem with echo not deleting files from the right which were removed from the left. Unfortunately that means it's useless for making backups in my case. And it's very disappointing because the reason I am using MS SyncToy is because of a bug in MS Vista which is preventing me from completing transfers of large amounts of files to my external drive.

So, any word on when 2.0 might be ready?

Thursday, October 11, 2007 8:22 PM by Steven Gliebe

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

This is just a great little app and I use it at home to back up all of my data.

However, I am recently getting an error:

"The application failed to initialize properly (0x000007b). Click on OK to terminate the application."

I have ensured my computer and all .NET frameworks (1,2, & 3) are up to date, I have uninstalled and reinstalled the application, I have researched and researched a possible solution, yet I have come up with nothing.

So, bothering the dev team is my last resort.

Any possible help?

Sunday, October 28, 2007 10:04 PM by Lance Couture

# re: SyncToy v1.4 Released

SyncToy v2.0 in ECHO mode is still grossly messed up.  Will not overwrite updated files from left to right....  Oh well !!!

Sunday, December 02, 2007 10:16 AM by Steven in Michigan

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