SyncToy for Windows XP

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

xml — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 19:58:34 GMT

its nice but it should support the ability to specify hidden network shares because the browse for folder doesnt show them

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

mswanson — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 21:52:44 GMT

I ran into the same issue, xml. To work around it, I created a new "Network Place" to "My Network Places." This allowed me to access the hidden folder from within SyncToy. Not ideal, but it works.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Phillip Molly Malone — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 03:43:13 GMT

I saw syncToy but continued with Allway Sync, main due to the autoSyncing.

Checkout my review of Allway sync at:
http://mollyzine-podcasting.blogspot.com/2005/08/allway-sync-perfect-sync-tool-for.html

TIA
Molly

SyncToy...it's about time!

Clive Watson's Weblog — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 20:51:36 GMT

If you have wanted to synchronise two folders between machines before but, didn't want to buy a solution...

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Joe — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 22:37:06 GMT

I can't even get the damn thing to work in Windows XP! I tried installing it twice and when I run the app it never shows its UI. However it is definitely running and eating up over 20000K I might add.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Alex — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 23:17:11 GMT

This is a GREAT tool. I'm so glad this was released. I've been looking for something exactly like this as I have both my tablet and my regular laptop and really wanted my documents sync'd!

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Flemming — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 00:16:50 GMT

I agree it´s a GREAT tool. I have used it many times over the past week and at a lot of different sites. But it also has it´s glitches, for example the program won´t run in the schedule mode if it´s runned as a different user than the one who is actualy logged on, but hey it´s free...

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Nate — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 20:43:57 GMT

Yes, It's very handy, but it would be great if it could run in the background when I'm not logged in e.g. scheduled jobs.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Matt — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 21:56:52 GMT

A good tool, not great. I would like to see the features of Robocopy integrated into this GUI based tool. A CLI would also be nice for automating tasks with scripting.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

spooksman — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 18:42:44 GMT

Since installation on both of my machines, they open the C:\Program Files\Microsoft folder that contains SyncToy folder after every restart - anyone else seen that?

Spooks

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Phillip Molly Malone — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 05:08:22 GMT

Hey Nate,
On the Scheduled Jobs, You definitely need to check out Allway Sync (my review here:
http://mollyzine-podcasting.blogspot.com/2005/08/allway-sync-perfect-sync-tool-for.html)
Has multiple options.
Molly

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

smisra — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 17:24:56 GMT

How does one use Sync up short cuts? For example, I want to create a Sync folder on my C: drive called Sync Home. To this folder, I copy shortcuts of the actual folders I want to sync up with (that way I can easily remove these shortcuts when I am no longer working on particular projects). However, on my USB drive, I want SyncToy to figure out that a shortcut availabe on my PC may not be available at the destination, so I want it to actually go into that shortcut and copy all files, perhaps allowing me to configure the "depth" of shortcuts it should follow.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

HiggiML — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 03:25:26 GMT

I thought this was a pretty cool util until I found that it doesn't delete empty subfolders. For example: I have \Pics1, \Pics2 & \Pics3. I decide I want to move them under a folder called \PICS so I end up with \PICS\Pics1, \PICS\Pics2 & \PICS\Pics3. After a sync, the destination drive will have the \PICS\PicsX folders with all my files but the original \PicsX folders will remain, albeit empty. Maybe I'm missing something but that's a big booboo.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

HiggiML — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 03:29:32 GMT

Oh by the way, Nate, I've successfully scheduled SyncToy to run via XP's Scheduled Tasks while I'm not logged on. That seems to work fine. My *only* gripe is the actualy folder structure synchronization. Good luck.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Moonbutt — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 05:20:49 GMT

Why dont you just use the latest version of Robocopy?? I've found it to be the lightest and quickest of all the sync and file tools available.
If you create a simple bat file with all the switches you can easily use it in a schedule.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Tommy — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 06:20:13 GMT

I thought I could use SyncToy to ECHO the files in my Documents folder to the CD-RW drive folder (for backup purposes).

No dice.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Jason — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:48:35 GMT

Does anyone know if you can install synctoy on both machines that are to be kept in sync. That way I can run it from which ever machine I'm on.
I was concerned the SyncToyDirPairs.bin file it creates will get copied and overwrite the SyncToyDirPairs.bin on the other machine.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

MikeLaughlin — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 08:34:56 GMT

It is very cool but won't delete empty folders. I have two computers with lots of AVI files in many folders. When I delete all the AVIs in folder A and move them to folder B on one computer the SyncToy won't delete folder A on the other computer. I have tried invane and it just won't work. Major flaw!

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Lee Keels — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 17:40:23 GMT

Can't get this to even install since I have .Net framework 2.0 installed. It says it requires a lower version number.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Shawn — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 20:41:23 GMT

Not being able to delete directories in echo mode makes Synctoy pretty much useless for me. Who the hell wants a bunch of empty directories laying around?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Reyna — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 01:24:51 GMT

Hi. Thanks for the feedback on SyncToy.

Deleting empty directories - this was a bigger task than we had time for in v1.0. It's on the feature list for v2.0. For 1.0, we based our decision to not to the work to delete empty directories on how other sync'ing programs like RoboCopy behave.

SyncToy v1.x requires the .Net Framework 1.1. It works to have both versions of the Framework installed - when I tested it, I could install SyncToy as long as fx1.1 was installed, then I added fx2.0 for the other apps that require it.

Thanks for the suggestions. We're definitely listening to what users are saying, although we cannot promise that every request will make it into the next release.

Reyna

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Doog — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 23:04:27 GMT

Hi, I've been trying for some time to get SyncToy to run as a scheduled task.

It works great when I'm logged in, but I share my computer with others, and I really want it to run for them too. Am I missing a trick here? HiggiML above says it works fine...but gives no details. Can anyone help?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Rex — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 23:33:28 GMT

I would like to know if I can use this to backup from multiple PCs on a network to one external USB 2.0 drive on one of the PCs??

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Rex — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 21:45:49 GMT

I could now with version 1.2 access an external drive as my backup file. But I cannot get the scheduled run to work. Is there something special I need to do other than the instructions in Help??

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

jfvi — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 16:33:05 GMT

i can't have it to work within the task manager
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft\SyncToy\SyncToy.exe" -R

the respond in the log file is :
SYNC: 04/22/2006 00:30:04:035: Beginning SyncToy run for all folder pairs.
SYNC: 04/22/2006 00:30:04:316: *** Exception: It is invalid to show a modal dialog or form when the application is not running in UserInteractive mode. Specify the ServiceNotification or DefaultDesktopOnly style to display a notification from a service application.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

bwana — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 03:48:25 GMT

how to make it run silently?

or as a service so that it wirks even when you are not logged in? (e.g. screen saver comes on and pc goes into standby)

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

jab — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:15:31 GMT

I also cannot get SyncToy to run as a scheduled task. I created a new user account "backup" that has a password so that it can run scheduled jobs. However, SyncToy never seems to actually run. The log says it is starting, but nothing is copied and the job finishes too quickly.

.NET Framework 1.1 MIA

grrr — Wed, 03 May 2006 18:40:56 GMT

The download page for the .NET Framework 1.1 gives a 404 when it redirects to get the package. As others have noted, the 2.0 framework won't do it for this installer.

Why must Microsoft break its websites this way? :(

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Stephen — Fri, 05 May 2006 13:17:50 GMT

This program looked very promising but unfortunately turned out to be a damp squib when discovering that it does not delete empty folders. After having done a couple of days work, moving, creating and deleting files and folders etc. The destination ends up a complete mess of empty folders in amongst the "live" ones. This should have been a fundamental requirement not an afterthought.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Frank — Thu, 11 May 2006 17:39:35 GMT

I used it to back up large amounts of data from an NDAS device to another computer. During that week, people have rearranged their files. Now, when I compare the backup to the orginal files, it appears that Synctoy just kept making backups of the new or rearranged files, but NOT deleting them from the backup. This solution is completely useless.

I decided to run it at home so I can backup the My Documents folder. I also had the same person. We are both using Echo to copy the contents of the My Documents folder to an external HDD. Guess what? after a week or so of doing this, when I right click on My Documents and look to see the file size and the amount of files and directories, it is VERY different than the one of the backup HDD. If it was truely echoing data, they should be extactly the same.

As far as I can tell, this program is usless for backing up data. I will definitely recommend people not use it.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Mark Greaves — Mon, 15 May 2006 13:31:40 GMT

A problem I have just discivered is that SyncToy backs up new sub folders of directories you have chosen not to copy.

E.g. I had set up Synch Toy to copy stuff from My Documents to a second hard disk as a scheduled task. The second disk is an older one I have just installed and is only 14 Gb but useful for document backup. I set SynchToy to NOT copy the My Music sub folder since the files in here would have filled the second disk. This worked fine until I ripped a new CD there by creating a new sub folder under My Music. This new sub folder was copied over to the second disk even though the parent My Music was flagged as not to be copied.

I don't really want to tweak the settings of SynchToy every time I add some music. ANy body know a way round this?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

John — Thu, 18 May 2006 18:07:00 GMT

UGH, how did the guy above manage to get it to run as a scheduled task without being logged in? ANYONE?????

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Mark Greaves — Tue, 23 May 2006 16:32:28 GMT

My scheduled task of Sync Toy only runs when I am logged in. I have not tried to create a task that runs when I am not logged in.

Sorry for the confusion. :-$

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

DavidB — Wed, 24 May 2006 19:27:08 GMT

I have the same problem as Spooks earlier post - the Synctoy folder opens after every reboot. Has anyone got a solution for this?

SyncToy for Windows XP

Tom Croft — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:37:31 GMT

I'm happy with SyncToy but, as usual, there's something missing. The fact that it doesn't delete folders on the RHS is a serions shortcoming. How can it be called a SYNC? if it doesn't smart delete. I have never been able to understand why microsoft's "ActiveSync" (For PDA's) isn't expanded to allow for PC-PC as well as PC-PDA sync'ing. Now that would be REALLY handy.

Kicking Dragon (dot) com » USB Drive Madness

Kicking Dragon (dot) com » USB Drive Madness — Thu, 25 May 2006 18:50:02 GMT

PingBack from http://www.kickingdragon.com/2006/05/25/usb-drive-madness/

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

fredandbarney — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 15:33:42 GMT

Would be nice if it was recompiled under the dotnet 2.0 environment. it only works with 1.1

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Aderbal — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 17:48:13 GMT

Is possible change the SyncToyDirPairs to diferent path. I would like to keep this configuration in my network drive. I think the directory C:\MyDocuments my users may clear this file ???
Thanks a lot.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

wim — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 16:46:15 GMT

before installing synctoy and nswering "yes"to installing framework, a version of framework is installed after which Synctoy again requires the installation of framework.
Fortunately there is Google to find the above answer to this problem here. MS knowledgebase did not help me. Anyway reading about more problems with synctoy I think it is not wise to use it.

Kicking Dragon (dot) com » Found a better USB syncing tool!

Kicking Dragon (dot) com » Found a better USB syncing tool! — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 06:41:21 GMT

PingBack from http://www.kickingdragon.com/2006/07/17/found-a-better-usb-syncing-tool/

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

madh — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 01:42:53 GMT

Each time I run Syntoy, I get a dialog that says "Syctoy is unable to determine if other instances of SyncToy are running, possibly because perfmon counters are turned off for some components. Is this the only instance of SyncToy currently running?" Yes No.

Very annoying.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

AndyB — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:16:33 GMT

I like it, its nice and pretty and seems easy to use.

I'd like to offer 2 items of feedback that I thought the tool lacked. I personally think these are quite major points, otherwise its great.

1. I cannot exclude files. eg, if i want to sync a pictures directory, I do not want it to copy thumbs.db for example.

2. I would greatly prefer it to exclude subdirectories of subdirectories I uncheck in the options dialog. The poster who complained about it syncing subdirs of My Music when new directories are added is right -it should be made to remember the root directory and exclude it and all its subdirs, unless a subdir is explicitly included. The GUI tree needs to be able to do this - uncheck a directory and all its subdirs get unchecked automatically.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Sanjeev — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:22:10 GMT

I love it too...
The only issue I had using it was while Syncing my PC to a flashdrive. One of the files was bigger than the free space available on flashdrive and it would not replace the old file. The total space available (old file + free space) was more than the new file replacing it.
Please let me know if there is someway of fixing this issue.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Clint Kirk — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 21:52:57 GMT

Nice tool, but not so keen on the way it's been implemented. Firstly, it creates a useless (to the user) folder called SyncToyData in "My Documents". Bad style. It should have been a subdirectory of %APPDATA%\Microsoft.

Secondly, it creates a hidden (unless, like me, you've set up Explorer to show hidden files) file called SyncToyDirectoryId.txt in each folder of a folder pair. Why on earth does it have to do that? That is intrusive, offensive behaviour and a total show-stopper for me! It was hoping to use it to synchronize my Favorites folder on my desktop at work with my laptop, then take the laptop home and syncronize my laptop's Favorites folder with my home desktop. I cannot do that, because the desktop and the laptop both have SyncToy installed and they both want to write different numbers in their copies of SyncToyDirectoryId.txt of my laptop's Favorites folder. What a pity, it could have been a very useful tool if only it had kept its own private data-keeping private.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

n22d3a — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:53:25 GMT

I have the same problem as Spooks and DavidB earlier post - the Synctoy folder opens after every reboot. Has anyone got a solution for this?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Jason Cox — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:25:33 GMT

I have to side with Clint Kirk... But for different reasons. I want to have multiple users sync a networked folder to an external device. I noticied that failing to delete the file SynctoydirectoryID.txt causes the files not to replicate correctly. While I think the file in the directory is poor form, being able to select a different file name with a registry key may be a quick and dirty solution for those of us wanting to use it now. Also a warning when first using the product would be nice.

The other thing that needs improvement is permission for non-admin users. Sure you can raise the .Net trust for Synctoy but the installation should at least ask to do it for you.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Shawn — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 20:58:13 GMT

Not being able to delete directories kills it for me. Who the heck wants a million empty directories lying around anways? And can you truly call it synchronization if it doesn't?

Spend the $20.00 and buy the Allwaysync Pro. Its worth it in my opinion.

http://allwaysync.com/

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

John — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 23:10:25 GMT

I have SyncToy set up to synchronize from my laptop to desktop with the laptop as the left folder. After every synchronize my laptop is littered with 200k syntoy files - what is going on?

Unless this is a setting that needs to be switched off it totally ruins SyncToy.

Scheduling SyncToy

Chris A — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 05:18:20 GMT

Picked this up after a bit of searching...

--------------------------------------------

SyncToy does not provide a user interface to schedule folder pairs to run at designated times. However, there is a method to schedule tasks using the Microsoft© Windows© operating system.

To schedule a task using the operating system:

1. From the Start menu, select All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Scheduled Tasks.

2. Select Add scheduled task to start the Scheduled Task Wizard. You will see a list of possible programs to run.

3. SyncToy may appear as an option in the list. If SyncToy does not appear in the list, click Browse and go find it.

4. The wizard will next prompt you to enter how often you want to run the scheduled SyncToy (for example, daily, weekly, et cetera). Select a frequency.

5. The next page asks when to start the task. Select a start time.

6. The next page asks for the user name and password to run the program under. Enter your user name and password.

7. The final page contains an option to open the properties dialog when the wizard ends. Select this checkbox.

8. Modify the Run textbox to include the –R command line option. –R all by itself will run all folder pairs that are active for run all. If you want to run just a single folder pair, add –R“My Pair” to the end of the command line. Note: there is a space before the hyphen but not one after the R. If the folder pair name contains a space, surround it with quotation marks, as the example above shows. For another example, assume that SyncToy is in the folder named C:\My Folder and that you want to run a folder pair named "My folder pair." Enter the command line as follows, including the quotation marks: "C:\My Folder\SyncToy.exe" -R"My folder pair." Note that there are two sets of quotation marks in this case: one is around the path to the SyncToy program file and the other surrounds the folder pair name.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

oldfogey — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:48:13 GMT

To people reading this page..

If you are still having difficulty running SyncToy when not logged in, the fix is fairly simple. You are required to have a password on the user account from which Synctoy acquires its permissions. Without a password, the Account must be logged in. With a password, make sure the 'Run Only when logged in is checked, click Apply, and enter your password. That should do it.

oldfogey

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

mach7 — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:41:33 GMT

I have noticed that SyncToy keeps overwriting some of the files I have not modified every time I run the tool. Have you experienced that? I have looked everywhere, but I have not found a solution. It is a problem when one of those files is very large. I am using version 1.2.0.75.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP (no alert for changes on both sides)

Matthew Tippett — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:31:28 GMT

Another potential problem with SyncToy is that if a file is changed on both the LHS and the RHS between syncs, it sems to just overwrite with the most recently modified rather than alerting you to the fact that it has changed on both sides and that you need to do something mannually to merge the file.

Another really useful faeture would be to have the option to change the direction of an overwrite on a manual basis per file.

Reyna's response (Monday, March 27, 2006 6:24 PM)to HiggiML (Saturday, February 04, 2006 7:25 PM) and MikeLaughlin (Wednesday, March 22, 2006 1:34 AM)comments was interesting, any update on that?

If these three things were able to be written itno wynctoy - it would be very useful. Would people recommend Allway Sync as the best GUI syncer that won't make an overwrite where changes have been made on both sides without warning you?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Markus — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 11:58:44 GMT

!SOLVE! the problem of userinteractive mode:

Watch at codeproject.com, a user has developed a console wrapper for the synctoy.dll. Thus, you don't have to start the frontend for the sync-prozess and thus, you won't get the error anymore. (search for synctoy)

Need to say, that you have to compile it, it's just sourcecode...

re: SyncToy for Windows XP (MCE2005!)

Your_mum_Quake — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 12:12:26 GMT

MCE file back-up/synchronisation:

SyncToy - does not run properly on MCE PC (unable to determine if other instances of SyncToy are running) so have it running on an XP PC instead which has a schedule to regularly wake from sleep state - if it's asleep (normally hibernation) and then wake up the MCE PC from its sleep state (normally hibernation), wait 40 seconds and then synchronise (echo) the data files (Music, Pictures and video) - ignoring the Temp file/dir in Record TV.

The XP PC only has one account with no password but XP by default can not add a scheduled task running under a local account without a password. Also, XP Sync toy does not appear to run properly under another account (with a password) that is not logged on! So need to disable security policy: 'Limit local account use of blank passwords to console logon only' - now you can add a scheduled task under the local account without a password!

SyncToy v1.4 Released

Michael Swanson's Blog — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 08:44:52 GMT

With over 33,000 total views, my August 9, 2005 announcement about the release of SyncToy is one of my

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Sean Kelley — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 05:45:00 GMT

SyncToy v1.4 shipped today and you can download the new bits at the link below:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e0fc1154-c975-4814-9649-cce41af06eb7&displaylang=en

In addition to some minor bug fixes, we focused on the following tasks for this release:

· Vista Compatibility

· .NET Framework 2.0 Compatibility

SyncToy 1.4 crashes when close -schedule task

your_mum_quake — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 18:33:45 GMT

MCE2005:

Having upgraded to 1.4 fixes the 'unable to determine if other instances of SyncToy are running' error!

However - after completing a successful scheduled task run SyncToy crashes! Have sent M$ the crash dump. SyncToy does run OK if ran manually and will close OK without crashing - it is only when run as a scheduled task will SyncToy crash upon closing after a successful run!

re: SyncToy 1.4 crashes when close -schedule task

Muhammad Haroon — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:18:42 GMT

That's odd. I did not encounter the problem with scheduled task as you mentioned.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Ace — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 05:55:34 GMT

SyncToy opens an annoying Explorer window on every startup and won't uninstall. It has even messed up System Restore so that there seems to be no way to get rid of it.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Mike Cline — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:11:04 GMT

I have been using SyncToy to backup my hard drive with pretty good success. But today I decided I wanted to exclude one large directory from the backup. The GUI is there for excluding subdirectories, but it seems to completely ignore it. I unchecked the directory that I was interested in excluding from the backup, but SyncToy continued to include that subdir in the synchronization. Why?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Polski — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 01:44:35 GMT

Agree with Mike Cline above - just installed SyncToy 1.4 on my freshly installed XP box with .Net 2.0 only (no 1.1). I can exclude entire subfolders but it ignores this setting and copies them anyway. Please fix this glaring mistake - it is making SyncToy 1.4 unusable at the moment.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Zino — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 17:12:25 GMT

In echo mode it doesn't delete files in the right directory which are deleted in the left one.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Richard Bates — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 20:07:39 GMT

Note that excluding a subfolder only excludes files within the subfolder. To exclude nested subfolders you still have to untick them yourself. You can right-click on a subfolder to have SyncToy do this for you.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Polski — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 18:46:33 GMT

Richard Bates wrote:

*** Note that excluding a subfolder only excludes files within the subfolder. To exclude nested subfolders you still have to untick them yourself. You can right-click on a subfolder to have SyncToy do this for you. **8

Err... yes we are doing this. It still does not exclude them from any Sync actions.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Tim — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 05:27:52 GMT

Sync toy is great, (here it comes) but it's failing when run as a scheduled task. It's failing with the exit code 0xe0434f4d, and I have the following errors in the Event Viewer: "The COM+ Event System failed to create an instance of the subscriber partition" and "EventType clr20r3, P1 synctoy.exe, P2 1.4.0.0, P3 453f990b, P4 system.windows.forms, P5 2.0.0.0, P6 4333aefa, P7 3d21, P8 ee, P9 system.invalidoperationexception, P10 NIL."

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Damien — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 08:17:34 GMT

Synctoy 1.4 would be great if the exclude folders would work.

I try to back up my My Documents folder, without the 2 folders My Music and My Pictures (as well as their sub-folders).

And every time, those 2 folders and their subfolders are copied...

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Dave Doherty — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 19:13:51 GMT

Why oh why won't MS do a file exclude box? When working with photos I'm always having to manually uncheck some .ini file in each of my 100's of folders.

Is there some way to do it in the "include" box maybe with with a minus sign???

This would be a great tool if for only this one thing (for me).

HELP!

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Viperguy — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 18:17:20 GMT

I second most of the remarks here. The tool is a good one for casual users that want to copy photos etc to multiple locations but has serious limitations for advanced users. In the server world, synchronization means just that. After a sync the target directory is identical to the source regardless of what was moved/added/deleted or when. This tool will not delete directories and will not create empty directories as well as a few other limitations. It's a FILE based copy utility rather than a DIRECTORY based sync tool.

**Also, for any advanced user the need to save the setup (directory pair and configs) is critical to ensure that the PC admin or user never looses all of the work of setting up dozens of directory pairs. Other sync utitilies IE All ways allows you to save the profile and then use it anywhere, reinstall, rebuild the PC, whatever and instantly recover the synch configs. SyncToy????? So when I rebuild my PC I loose all the synch configs and start over? Sync'Toy' is the correct name. Not bashing the product. Great for casual users as I said, but a toy at best

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

cullwock — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 00:03:35 GMT

SyncToy 1.4 does have some serious problems. I tried to sync two directories, and it suggested deleting about 3,000 files from the local side, even though exactly the same files were on the remote one, in exactly the same directories, with exactly the same date and time stamps and sizes. I have no clue why... Then, when I run the whole thing again, it copies them back over! Strange thing is, though, when I choose to echo rather than synchronize, it doesn't complain at all... Weird.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

chris brace — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 02:18:24 GMT

I have a problem using synctoy on several machines to keep a series of copies of my data. The tool keeps ignoring lots of files and folders when they DO need to be copied. If i run it on an individual folder it works fine. If I try a whole group of folders and subfolders it seems to ignore stuff at random.

Any ideas?

Chris

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

chris brace — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 02:30:07 GMT

Ok, I think I may have found a fix. I have deleted all the SyncToyDirectoryId.txt files and rerun the sync job and that appears to be working properly. My guess is that the SyncToyDirectoryId.txt files somehow because I'm using synctoy on several machines. It is just a guess though!

Seems a messy way to do it, maybe it's an attempt to make it run faster but I'd prefer it to sct as if it were the first time every time, it seems to work then!

Chris

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Harlan — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 22:13:33 GMT

I have the problem with autorun; I also have the problems mentioned with exclusions and matching multiple devices. There is no option to *ignore* previous information and simply do a full check on the files. This program is not a proper "utility"; it's more like a throwaway experiment someone did as a training exercise. If they're not going to support it properly, at least post the source somewhere and let people tweak it themselves.

Doing IT » Blog Archive » Michael Swansons Blog : SyncToy for Windows XP

Doing IT » Blog Archive » Michael Swansons Blog : SyncToy for Windows XP — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 18:02:30 GMT

PingBack from http://mkweb.mk.psu.edu/blogs/dgribble/2006/12/15/michael-swansons-blog-synctoy-for-windows-xp/

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Dan — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:38:15 GMT

i tried to echo to my usb hard disk. i was expecting it to delete files on it that did not exist in the specified folders on the "left" its tedious to go through and manually delete files on 2 drives.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Jerry — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:03:09 GMT

I use Synctoy to quickly sync files from home, laptop, work PCs using USB stick. I merely sync entire My Documents folder. Trouble is that Synctoy files are stored in My Documents folder, which causes errors. Sometimes Synctoy ends up looking for folder pairs from another PC. Should be a way to direct where Synctoy stores these operating files, i.e. not in My Documents.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Derek — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:35:17 GMT

Does anyone know where the synctoy settings are kept such that you could copy the preconfigured pairs from one machine to another?

shahine.com/omar/ - Amazon S3 programs

shahine.com/omar/ - Amazon S3 programs — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 00:40:29 GMT

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re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Jim — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 18:56:53 GMT

In Echo mode, it doesn't work with folders (neither creating new nor deleting old).

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Mike — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:27:54 GMT

In Echo mode the files on the left are not deleted on the right. It only works with updating or new files. Overwrites and new files work fine though.

SyncToy - Pretty Good for a free product

Hugo — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 12:47:00 GMT

I use it for Archive (using Contribute which means I can delete older versions of files on my live disc knowing they'll be on the archive copy) and Sync laptop to desktop.

Still room for improvement (eg when a folder+subfolders are marked for exclusion, excluding new subfolders; putting deleted "old versions" somewhere specific, long path names still cause errors, Update on File Change (with Network Drive attach detected)) but generally very good for a free tool, and avoids all the problems of Briefcase.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Allan Olesen — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 22:45:37 GMT

This tool seems to be intended for keeping two folders in sync in a situation where user changes may happen in both folders.

Such a tool must ALWAYS warn the user if a file have changed in both folders since last sync, since the tool have no way of knowing which (if not both) version contains changes to be kept. SyncToy fails at this.

Until this is corrected, the tool is more Toy than Sync.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Greg — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 15:34:37 GMT

This is for anyone that is still having problems with v1.2.

As noted above, for v1.2, the configuration files/pairs are stored in “My Documents\SyncToyData\”, so you can copy these back to a new installation.

Also thanks to Chris Martin at http://usenet.p2preactor.com/index-t-1533203.html for coming up with a solution for the dreaded “SyncToy is unable to determine if other instances of SyncToy are running” problem.

It turns out the perfc009.dat was missing from my “c:\windows\system32\” directory. I just copied the file from an old XP installation,and just to be sure, I copied any file named "perf*.*". Now SyncToy starts up without the error message. BTW, when I was getting the error message, the Performance/System Monitor wouldn't work either, but now it's running.

I'm able to run SyncToy in the Task Scheduler whether I’m logged on or not, I’m using XP Pro with multiple accounts, just followed the directions, made sure the “Run As” was correctly filled in, and the password entered, and the “Run only if logged on” was unchecked. Everything works within acceptable parameters, not perfect, but acceptable for a free program.

Awesome tool.

Mohit Datta — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:06:13 GMT

I love this tool. I think the design team made the right decisions in keeping it simple. The target audience is well served by this tool.

I'm sure they'll fix whatever bugs exist in the 2.0 version. My only feature request is the ability to filter out all subfolders recursively, if you deselect a folder.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Dave — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:40:11 GMT

Hello,

Good simple tool, however it lacks an important feature (either that or I can't find it), which is excluding files during a backup.

I'm trying to use SyncToy in conjunction with an autorun.inf on my USB key to 'echo' the contents of my FireFox profile on my HD to the profile folder of PortableFirefox on my USB key when I plug the thing in. The problem is if FireFox is running already, it creates a file called parent.lock which you cannot copy because it's in use.

Is there a way to tell SyncToy to skip that file?

Thanks.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Rachel — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 02:11:37 GMT

Hi, I have a fairly unsual setup with a NAS that has my "My Documents" folder on it, and each PC on the network has a login for me with the My Documents folder pointing to the NAS location. That way when I log onto whatever PC, my My Documents is always available.

I am finding the The huge gotcha with SyncToy is the storage of the logfile and pair informaiton in the My Documents folder, which is on the NAS (although the .exe installed into my local settings folder, which is local to each PC. Bizarre location if you ask me!). But having the pairs in the My Docs location means that when I run SyncToy on any PC, it can't have local pairs just for that PC unless I do a complicated set of turning ons and turning off pairs before I run it each time.

SyncToy needs to store its settings and logs files somewhere more approriate, like the local settings folder! Or even let it be a user configurable option.

I also dislike intensely the way if files are changed in both locations it just silently deletes the older one. Hardly a sync tool at that point, is it??

Anyone else wrestling with similar issues?

Thanks.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Henry Nguyen — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:54:01 GMT

I do like this program very much for its simplicity. However it keeps create a folder names _SYNCAPP every time a new sync job is started.

Not sure if this has anything to do with the previously uninstalled Allways Sync.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Henry Nguyen — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 01:44:20 GMT

Sorry guys. I just discoved that Allways Sync created these hidden folders originally. Just have to manually delete them all.

Thanks.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Ed — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:29:55 GMT

I love SyncToy and find it a very useful tool except for two things. Not deleting the empty directories can be a problem. The biggest problem though is that if I uncheck copy folder and all subfolders SyncToy will copy new subfolders that are created in a folder. I unchecked that SyncToy should copy temp internet folders but since new ones are created all the time it will start to back up the new ones. The biggest problem with this is that SyncToy has a major problem with backing up file and folder paths that are too long. The tem internet folder seems too often create files in this category. If the name is too long SyncToy will fail. I run the backup automatically and SyncToy does not inform you of the failure in auto mode. Do you know if these problems will be fixed in version 2 and about when version 2 will come out?

SyncToy and FTP

camtarn — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 05:04:30 GMT

Awesome tool - I've used Unison for this sort of thing before, but I find the SyncToy interface much more intuitive and usable for the simple tasks I'm using it for. Thanks to the SyncToy dev team!

My only big feature wish is that it could sync over a network, using FTP, SFTP, WebDAV etc, so that I could use it to automatically sync my local copy of a website with my online copy, and send backups of my files to my webhost. However, it's still great without this feature.

More worrying are the reports I've seen above of silently overwriting older files - this probably should be fixed at some point. Until it is, I guess I just need to keep that in mind, and sync often.

re: Bug?

SaxDaddy — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:59:19 GMT

I like the concept of SyncToy but I _had_ an issue that I now can't seem to duplicate...

I installed v1.4 and rather than use the task scheduler I decided to create a shortcut in my userprofile's startup group so that it ran when only I logged on. The short cut called synctoy.exe (fully qualified directory with correctly syntacted quotes) and the -R option. ST crashed every time and deleted my folder pair data after each crash.

I decided to try the task scheduler and it worked! No crash and no deleted folder paris. That's great but now I can't recreate the crash. I guess that's good but:

1. Why did it crash in the first place

2. Why does it delete folder pair data after a crash. Log files only show successful syncs and I didn't check to see if the BIN files were deleted.

Just curious...

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Larry Stone — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 21:45:29 GMT

This tool was the solution to two needs for me.

1. I needed a way to copy backup files (.bkf) created by NTBackup from where they are stored to a removable USB drive for off-site storage. The backup job is scripted. Each file has a unique name based on date/time, and the oldest files are periodically deleted. SyncToy in echo mode is a great solution for making the removable drive a mirror of the server's backup folder. P.S: In this instance I'm running SyncToy 1.4 on Server 2003!

2. Workstation users were storing mission critical data locally on their PCs. Created each their own location on a network share, worked with each user to determine the critical data stored locally, and created folder pairs running in echo mode. Network share is backed up nightly. Users run SyncToy before shutting down each night.

Observation: SyncToy is a "profile specific" application. When configured as a scheduled task, the account it runs under must have a profile on the machine and it must be configured with the folder pairs. I have a special account (password never expires) for running scheduled tasks. I cannot configure SyncToy folder pairs while logged on as Administrator and then run SyncToy as a scheduled task under the special account and expect it to sync the folder pairs that are stored in the Administrator's profile.

SyncToy doesn't perform as I thought

Larry Stone — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 20:15:53 GMT

Running as a scheduled task does not perform as I thought. If you are not logged on with the user account that the scheduled task is running under then it will fail. This makes it unsuitable for what I need. I need a regular user (the owner of the business who carries the removable drive home as an off-site storage of server backup) to be able to launch the job from his desktop after connecting the USB drive to the server.

Since the VB code for overcoming this problem is available at http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/SyncToy_Helper.asp then I must assume that it would be an easy feature to enable for the people who create and maintian this tool.

I am not a programmer but have created a compiled program that automates running NTBackup. It runs with a UI if no command line arguments are passed, else no UI. It will run as a scheduled task with no one logged on at the console and it must retrieve data from the profile of the user account that it runs under. No problemo.

For SyncToy to be so close to a needed solution but after 2 days realizing that it simply won't work it very disappointing.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Falcon — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 23:10:45 GMT

Has anyone managed to completely uninstall SyncToy? I tried upgrading to the latest version but keep getting a message that Windows is unable to uninstall the older version of SyncToy in WinXP. Also, only one Administrator is able to access and use the program when it was first installed. It would be good if other users could get to use the utility too. Please reply if you know how to completely clean this thing off a machine.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Nicole — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:24:14 GMT

I am also wanting to know the trick on how to completely clean my windows XP machine of sync toy. If anyone has a clue, please let me know.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Yan — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:57:34 GMT

I don't know if anyone else has the same problem. Basically, I tried to sync a folder to another, with the source folder full while target folder empty. So Synctoy should copy all subfolders/files to the target one. But it consistently miss one file every time I try it. If I run "preview" a couple times then the left-out file will eventually pop out to let you copy it to the target folder. Any ideas what's going on?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Yan — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 23:20:45 GMT

Just realized that SyncToy has problem dealing with files that have long filenames/suffix. I truncated the suffix of that left-out file and now it seems to work.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Marc Neiger — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 14:19:42 GMT

I also have the problem of large files (>10Mb) getting overwritten/retransferred without apparent reason.

I use 1.4.0.0

Cheers

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

JV — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 16:51:53 GMT

I just found that all of the data that I've been synchronizing between my laptop and my desktop that was the SAME on both machines was deleted. "My Documents" was reduced from 28,824 files to 227 files, on both machines!! The only file utility that I've run for the past two weeks has been SyncToy. Thank God for the external hard-drive backup in our RV!! Has anyone run into this kind of issue?

Metadata problem

gregbphoto — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 03:26:18 GMT

Sync toy has problem of stripping parts of metadata from my Canon 5D and 10d files. Some files get copied without orientation tags, some get access denied error, depending on what software handled their imports.Problem manifests regardless of what type of synch I perform. I thought this would be a great way to back up to my laptop, but with this glitch I am affraid to let this thing handle my important files.

Anyone had similar problems?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

KK — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:22:59 GMT

Love it...just requires a few bug fixes and a few enhancements. Not sure if this has been mentioned in this thread already, but one thing I noticed in the Echo mode was when I rename a source folder that has sub-folders, and try to Sync, SyncToy hangs. CPU usage kicks to nearly 100% and nothing seems to happen. I recover by stopping synching. Once I renamed the folder in source back to original, there was no problem synching.

I use 1.4.0.0.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Cleveland, Ohio — Mon, 07 May 2007 02:06:30 GMT

I've used SyncToy 1.4 with no problems in the past. All I do is ECHO from the desktop to the flash drive. However, recently I find that SyncToy is not creating any new folders (which obviously means the new files in those folders don't get copied to the flash drive). I tried creating the folders on the flash drive manually using Windows Explorer, but I get a "cannot create folder" error message.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Cleveland, Ohio — Mon, 07 May 2007 20:37:08 GMT

I forgot to ask at the bottom of the message above - does anyone have a solution to this problem?

Same Temporary Internet Files copying bug

owen — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:50:26 GMT

I have been using SyncToy to setup automated backup for clients to their external backup drives. I've worked around the drive naming issue if using more than one external USB drive with the excellent freeware, USBDLM http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html. A simple .ini file on each drives assures its drive letter. Combined with SyncToy, I can have the entire Docs.Sets directory backed up to two separate drives, allowing for onsite/offsite backup with easy swapping.

The ONLY thing breaking this completely free solution is SyncToy's difficulty with long filenames in the Temporary Internet Files directory. The primary culprit of these creations seems to be Kodak's Easy Share software. I wrote them, but I'm not holding my breath... I have setup an automated run of cleanmgr using the /sagerun:50 and /sageset:50 commands, but this doesn't always clear out the temp internet files directory. So I guess there are TWO problems.

1) SyncToy's inability to handle the long filenames and failing with little to no warning

and

2) Cleanmgr failing to clear out the tempinternetfiles directory prior to the scheduled backups.

Any ideas and reco's from the crowd here?

owen

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

nick — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:43:02 GMT

I'm trying to echo my PC files and folders to an external backup hard drive. Simply want whatever changes I make on my PC to be mirrored on the external drive. SyncToy got very confused when I renamed one of my subfolders. SyncToy reports that all the renames failed. So SyncToy is not so good if you re-organise your folders (something I do quite often)

Windows copy tips for simple backups

Ask Jack — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:19:38 GMT

I use a fairly rudimentary system of backing up my important documents by copying them to an external hard drive. For simplicity, I tend to copy whole folders across and replace what was there before, rather than try and pick...

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

DennisT — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:50:52 GMT

Running v1.4 on XP Pro SP2 (local & remote). Do a run and it indicates it was successful. Then do a preview and MANY more files appear (I'm attempting to back up approx 20GB). I can manually check them one by one but what's the use? Even if I do, what files are being missed? This program is a disaster in waiting.

I'm also seeing the bug with empty folders being left behind.

Write Errors w/Synctoy

Tim — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:29:58 GMT

Sometimes, after I have run Synctoy, I try to open the recently sync'd EXCEL file and instead of opening it, Excel states that it is in an unrecognizable format. Anyone else have a problem/fix for this?

Thanks

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Rodney Franks — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 20:36:13 GMT

I have had problems with SyncToy 1.4.0.0 hanging.

I would try and synchronise 'my documents' folder and it would work a couple of times and then today whilst I was using it, both the preview or run , would hang on the step "loading saved information for C: ...". So after waiting for 20minutes i eventually closed synctoy window which left a synctoy process running which i also had to kill.

The way i solved the problem was to delete the bin files in the folder

"C:\Documents and Settings\rodney\My Documents\SyncToyData"

Be careful not to delete the SyncToyDirPairs.bin file though which seems to contain the list of 'Folder Pairs'.

After deleting the *.bin files (there is a left and a right file associated with each folder pair) it now works perfectly !!!

SyncToy for Windows XP

David Britton — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 05:02:28 GMT

I had SyncToy running at one point. Then it ceased and began trying to execute an install but was unable to finish (what, I don't know.) I decided to reinstall but am not permitted to. The dialog informs me that the install is unable to continue due to potentially unsafe material having been downloaded and that I must get the administrator (me) to change the installation process to "basic". Has something gone awry on my machine that I can no longer execute .msi files? Anyone?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Andrew — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:18:04 GMT

Cheers for the tip Rodney - that's exactly the same hanging problem I'm having with SyncToy 1.4.0.0.

I have a networked backup machine, and until SyncToy arrived I had to delete the old backup and copy everything over again each time - very time consuming! Now I just echo everything.

I find that the "loading saved information for C: ..." etc message only appears if the folder pair being echoed has lots of files - and it only fails on the 2nd time round, after the first run completed OK (i.e. there is no relevant .bin file to load on the 1st time round). Might it be something to do with the size of the .bin file? Certainly the SyncToy task is eating lots of RAM when it hangs, I've seen approx 400MB and 700MB.

Deleting the .bin files has two disadvantages. Firstly, the speed of the sync run will be slower, as SyncToy will reconstruct the directory/file structure in full each time. Secondly, any files you've deleted since the last backup will not be deleted from the backup next time SyncToy is run, as (if I understand correctly) the .bin file contains information as to what files were and weren't there (and where they were) at the last run.

I can live with the 'not deleting empty folders' bug as they don't take up space in the backup, but not deleting files from the backup that I have deleted in the original will be a problem, as the backup will slowly grow. I guess I'll just have to manually delete the whole backup every so often.

Another solution to this problem is to reduce the number of files in the folder pair (go from one folder pair D:\ to multiple folder pairs D:\Documents, D:\Pictures, D:\Software, D:\Video etc) but it's inconvenient to say the least, as I have about 20 folders in my D (data) drive. (I wouldn't use D:\ and exclude only say D:\Pictures as it falls over the bug where new folders created in the excluded D:\Pictures are not excluded.)

Also - some of the problems others have found may be due to files being "open" at the time - you can't expect SyncToy to deal with a file correctly if it is open for editing...

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

whome — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:49:37 GMT

A person by the name of Ashish says that the ghost folder issue should be resolved with the next version of SyncToy:

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=10673218#post10673218

Just FYI.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Rennie — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:01:38 GMT

I cannot uninstall my SyncToy using the ADD/REMOVE programs.

Any ideas?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Wim — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 01:53:29 GMT

It is quite obvious that "echo"does not delete in the right folder how can this program be released?

Free ok, but instead of reliable backups you get a mess. Beware of this program and try something else.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

hola4 — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:27:12 GMT

"Each time I run Syntoy, I get a dialog that says "Syctoy is unable to determine if other instances of SyncToy are running, possibly because perfmon counters are turned off for some components. Is this the only instance of SyncToy currently running?" Yes No.

Very annoying."

Answer:

Enabling that perf counter for the PerfProc.Dll addresses this issue and

enables SyncToy to run.

We will take a look at alternative means of determining whether SyncToy is

already running for possible inclusion in a future release.

For those interested, the registry entry for PerfProc is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\PerfProc\Performance

As you might expect, the Disable Performance Counteres REG_DWORD = 0 for not

disabled and = 1 for disabled.

I hope this helps.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Vinzz — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 01:46:03 GMT

Totally agree with some users : great tool (no mess for me, at least not yet??) BUT the "exclude * files" function SHOULD be implemented...

Team Syncing

Tobias — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:38:22 GMT

Seasr SyncToy Enthusiasts!

Problem: we want to run SyncToy on multiple notebooks to synchronise the same network folder tree.

Will this work, has somebody experience with this? What will happen when synchronising a file that was modified "left" and "right"?

Kind regards - Tobias

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Derek Pullen — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:20:09 GMT

BEWARE.

I just loaded SyncToy on my XP system and was looking to Sync up my My Documents folder with a folder on my network as it's been 4 months since I last backed it up. (my bad)

I select the folders and run the preview. It's taking forever so I kill it and go back to my My Documents folder and it's empty. 15GB worth of work lost because I kill a job?

Stay away for this monster.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Sergei — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:39:40 GMT

Does anybody knows how to run SyncToy automaticaly? It runs manualy fine but when I scheduled a task - no action.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

csinacnc — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:22:48 GMT

Being able to filter by modification date is imperative.

The preview mode should show the from on one side and the to on the other, with arrows or color codes to show which direction files are moving.

You must be very viligent when syncin' between different computers. If the computer clock don't agree, you can and will wipe out new data with old data. (This happened to be around daylight savings time adjustment

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

David Mc — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:34:31 GMT

Hi, I think SyncToy needs a LOT of work. Here are a few things I've noticed after installing it to back up my DFS (Distributed File System) to a local hard drive on my new Vista Ultimate machine with a 500GB drive that for the first time has allowed me to shadow my whole DFS to a single drive.

1. It won't read any file with a Tilde (~) in the file name!! I can't beleive nobody else has noticed this. Tilde's in file names are extremely common. MS Operatings systems, apps, and developer tools CD's generally all have files that include tilde's (Win 2K, 2K3, XP, MSVS 6,2003,2008, MapPoint 2002, and many more) and I store those CD's on my DFS (so that I never need to use install CD's, the computers point to the DFS is their install source and any add/remove features action reads from there, a common practice). This is a HUGE problem. The Windows OS's all accept tilde's in the file names--why on earth won't this program?

2. When I backup (echo) my DFS, it simply does not remove files that are no longer present! Do I have to have performed the delete operation from the installed location of SyncToy for it to recognize that they are now missing or what? (I don't just mean the folders remain, which is also a bad feature as has been widely pointed out here, but the files themselves remain.) I've run the echo several times and the files stubornly persist even though they have been deleted from the "Left" folder for weeks.

3. Long file names are accomodated by the Windows operating systems with no problems, yet several hundred files are not readable by SyncToy because the paths are too long. I can't rename the paths because they are intall CD's. That SyncToy won't accept the same long paths and Windows (98SE, ME, 2K, XP, 2K3, Vista) will is a tragic flaw.

4. Numerous "access denied" errors result (seemingly randomly) during synching (echo). I can browse them in Notepad or whatever, and the permissions are totally permissive (Everyone Full Control). What is causing this? Other backup tools encounter no such problems. Why are different files doing it each time? Mysterious...

From what I've seen, the "Toy" part of the name is very apt, and no valuable data should ever be entrusted to the program. A better idea would be to simply perform a file copy to the shadow directory once in a while. I'm also going to look at the inherrant features of DFS for creating a shadow DFS, but I back in the Win2K days when I tried it last that was problematic.

Anyway, SyncToy developers should throw a few files with tilde's in the name into their test file set, and use some very long file paths as well.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

M. E. Kabay — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:57:04 GMT

Has anyone run into the message "Exception during run: The even log file is full"?

The synchronization stops at that point.

Any idea where these file may be? I tried deleting the *.bin files in the SyncToy directory but that had no effect on the problem.

Ideas?

Best wishes,

Mich

M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP-ISSMP

* CTO & Prog Dir, MSc in Info Assurance

School of Graduate Studies

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School of Business & Management

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re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Adam — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:08:15 GMT

The long filename issue with SyncToy is a deal breaker.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Magda — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 05:16:39 GMT

I echoed part of my data.

Now I wanted to backup another pair of folders and simply run into an error all the time...

Did anyone run into error "exception during run Value does not fall within the expected range"

It just will not Echo / Synchronize ...

I don't know really what is the problem.

Please help.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Darren — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:43:34 GMT

I used to work with Synctoy a lot, however recently have been experiencing error upon startup.

EventType clr20r3, P1 synctoy.exe, P2 1.4.0.0, P3 453f990b, P4 system.windows.forms, P5 2.0.0.0, P6 471ebf68, P7 16e0, P8 e4, P9 system.componentmodel.win32, P10 NIL.

Any ideas?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

ugordude — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:57:17 GMT

SyncToy major problem - any way to fix?

In contribute mode, laptop data is backed up to a hard drive by sync. Then, in the laptop, I delete a file to free space (this file already on the hard drive for archival), and a week later create a new file into the same folder with the same name but with unrelated content. Now, if I do a sync, then this new file overwrites the older one on the hard drive, even though the two are not each other's updated version. This is data loss! Even happens when do the hash file content check.

Any way around or fix?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

naomi — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:38:16 GMT

I have followed the instructions to schedule a task to run synctoy automatically, but it doesn't work because my user doesn't have a password. I can't create a password for my user in my work environment.

Is there a way to have the task scheduler run without a password? I see this message in the status bar of the scheduler: "The scheduled task did not run because no user account password was entered." Anybody know what I'm doing wrong? Or is synctoy just not a good solution for me?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Jon — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:46:00 GMT

Exclude, should be able to exclude folders. i.e. I am using this to sync a website (from the server side) and I want to exclude the_vti_* folders. However, it only excludes file types, but I want to sync these files in the other folders, just not these folders.

Is a new version being created? If not, is the code available? iss_jon@hotmail.com

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Frank — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:56:19 GMT

I am running Synctoy 1.4 and receive a message telling me "Synctoy has encountered a problem ...etc with the info: Modver5.1.2 600.3119 App ver 1.4.0.0 Mod name kernell32 dll and offset 00012a5b.

I have run the "repair" function to no avail. Can you help fix Synctoy, - it is sucg a great help/programme. Tks & God Bless

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Natty — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:01:43 GMT

I like sync toy.

As long as this forum has been on, it seems the only question that has been too tough for anyone to answer is how to make scheduled tasks work. The -R thing is a bust...

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Jesse Moore — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:41:16 GMT

SyncToy works perfect within the same PC but when I attempt going from one PC to another PC the Create Folder accepts the folders and goes all the way to the send window but when I send I get the following error message, for each item in the folder I was trying to send......Error: Unknown Error. Access is denied. (exception from HRESULT:0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))

Can anyone advise what do I do now ???

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Mark Wilson — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:17:30 GMT

Jesse - I've just come across a lot of access denied errors when echoing to a remote file share. I had permissions to read all of the files and it had me stumped. Then I found that all of the problem files had the read only flag set - presumably when echoing a read only file the attributes are set before the file copy takes places, resulting in the denial of access.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Johann — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:22:09 GMT

I've upgraded this toy application several times, but bugs keep coming. Today I had a division by zero error !!! The software stalled and no bug report was created.

I allways use echo mode, but when I use properties for the folder paisr I get different numbers of files and different sizes....

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

YSReddy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:52:05 GMT

I am using SyncToy 2.0 on Vista and configured with scheduler to run automatically. It is working very well. my issue is, each time it is opening a command prompt window (ofcourse it is automatically closing the same once the sync is done) which is causing disturbance when I am working with other applications. Is there any option to avoid this ?

Thanks in advance

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

jf — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:10:52 GMT

We were going to use SyncToy as a way of automating syncs between a development machine and live machine but the echo feature fails in its purpose to have an exact copy of the source on the destination (right hand folder). This is because for some reason it doesn't delete folders - surely this is the contribute option but the ECHO option is selected. Is this a bug? When will it be fixed?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

buccanoles — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:10:37 GMT

Echo does not work. Sometimes it will catch the file additions on the left, but it NEVER catches the deletions from left to right.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

zzzrabbit — Thu, 07 May 2009 02:16:30 GMT

I have a question about SyncToy and I have not got a response in the MS SyncToy forum.

I have two files on seperate networked computers where I need to keep the file on one computer updated daily with the changes that occur in the file on the other computer. (Simple so far!)

The problem is these two files MUST have different filenames. The files are accessed by different applications (databases), and it is not possible to have the "receiving" file have it's name changed.

I would think this is possible, but I cannot find it in the SyncToy Help or anywhere online

Please explain how this can be done.

Thanks so much.

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Sridharr — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:32:52 GMT

Is There any way to run synctoy automatically means if a file is added to source folder then that file automatically added in deestination folder.[using scheduler we can do this but with in timeframe].is there any way to run based upon changes[automatically]?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Ratty — Sun, 17 May 2009 20:10:27 GMT

I have two external HD which I want to use to back up my music. I thought echo should work with the master on the left, When I move a file on the master to say under a new directory the sych doen;t delete the directories on the slave.

Cheers

Ratty

SyncToy 2.0 ignores files with long names

Jonas — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:51:04 GMT

Hi,

working with SyncToy 2.0 (2.0.100.0, Built 12.08.2008, run under Windows XP Home): apart from "path too long" messages you get when the destination path is too long, SyncToy SILENTLY ignores all files where the source path is already too long... a shame :-(

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

francis — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:01:21 GMT

As an administrator I don't get alerts when synctoy fails to backup users files from their PCs to the sever. How do I get the alert, any help?

re: SyncToy for Windows XP

Roelof — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:49:58 GMT

I used 2.0 under XP to synchronize between a usb connect harddisk and a network connect harddisk.

When copying manually there is no problem, but when I synchronize big files, mostly jpg and mp3 files things went awfully wrong. On the copied picture you would see a 10-20% band of the picture and the rest would be gray. Same with copied mp3 files, after 10 seconds the song stops.

In copying back and forth, this way my entire collection of 60GB of music was entirely ruined. Luckely I could recover from DVD back ups and the history of my account at the store.

If the same had happened with my pictures I would have lost 12 years of memories. No more Synctoy for me