Ever wanted two folders in two different locations to sync in real time? Maybe you have one folder on your desktop or laptop and want to sync it up with another PC in your home or with an external storage device such as a USB hard drive or network storage device (NAS)?
There are many free programs that can help you sync two folders, but very few of them do a good job of syncing folders in real time. By real-time, I mean that the user does not need to manually open the program and start synchronization, or wait for the program to start periodically.
In this article, I’m going to write about a free program that you can use to set up real-time synchronization between two folders stored in different locations. This is useful for backup purposes or if you work as a team and don’t want to use a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive.
Dsynchronize
Dsynchronize is a free program written by a Polish developer whose website looks like it is from the 1990s! However, don’t judge a book by its cover, because the programs he writes are excellent.
First, when you follow the link above, you need to scroll down a bit to get to the program you want. At first I thought I was visiting the wrong site because I kept reading about his first program called Dspeech. Scroll down past this and then Dshutdown and you will see Dsynchronize
As noted earlier, this is a pretty bad looking website. Luckily, the software is clean and free of unwanted software, malware, ads, etc. After downloading the ZIP file, extract all files and run the application file.
When you first launch the app, you will see two boxes at the top for source and destination. First we need to configure them.
Select the Sources check box and press Enter. You will now see two buttons on the right: “Filter” and “Browse”.
Click the Browse button and select the first folder. Once selected, you can click the Filter button if you want to exclude certain file types or exclude subfolders. If you want to keep everything in sync, don’t worry about the filter button.
Now that we have two folders selected, we can start configuring the options. By default, sync will only work when you click the Sync button. According to the documentation, before enabling realtime sync, you must first perform normal sync.
However, before doing the synchronization, let’s configure the settings. To begin with, if you want changes to sync between both folders, you should check Bidirectional Sync. This will also automatically activate the Copy only new files box. I also recommend that you select the “Create a folder if it doesn’t exist” checkbox so that when you create a new folder in one folder, it is automatically created in another synced folder.
Another important parameter is backing up changes. This is useful if you want to keep multiple versions of changes in case you weren’t going to delete something or want to see previous versions of the document, etc.
There are a few more options that are self-explanatory. If you get confused, be sure to read the TXT file that is located in the folder where the application was unpacked.
Go ahead and click the Sync button to complete one sync. After that you can make some changes and then do another sync to make sure everything works the way you want.
To get real-time sync, you must check the “Real-time sync” checkbox in the “Special options” section. Now, if you leave the program window open and start adding, removing or updating files in the source or target folder, you will see that the folders are updated automatically without any user intervention.
It’s still not ideal because you need to keep the program window open, but the developer was smart enough to figure it out. In the Timer Synchronization section, you need to check two more options: Autostart and Autostart as a service.
When you try to test the “Autostart” button, you will receive a message that you need to run Dsynchronize as administrator. To do this, close the program, then right-click the application file and select “Run as administrator”.
Now you can check the Autostart without message box. Then check the “Autostart as a service” box and you will see a pop-up window where you need to click the “Install Service” button.
Once you do this, the Start Service button will become active. Click on it and don’t worry about account, password, etc. Just make sure the system account is checked. Click Finish and you should see that the program says it is running as a service.
This is it! Now close the program and start updating, adding or deleting data from your folders and watch these actions instantly sync with another folder.
Overall, the program performed very well in my tests, and I was impressed with the speed, as well as the fact that I was able to back up changes and see the log file of everything that was updated, added, or removed. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to leave comments. Enjoy!
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