Programs - Sync

Aim

Many dial-up remote control or remote access programs have a facility called ‘Sync’. What it does is makes sure that two directories have the most up-to-date files in each. Windows 95 has a facility called ‘Briefcase’ that does this. The problem with the dial-up programs is that they are hard to use on a network and the problem with Win95 is that it was acctually designed for computer to laptop syncronisation. What we wanted was to sync two complete data disks on two different computers.

Method

What the program does is walk through the source directory tree and compare all the files it finds with the target tree. As it checks the files it copies the newer files over the older files and creates files and/or directories that only exist in the source tree in the target tree. This hopefully means that both trees get an up-to-date version of everything stored in the source directories.

Unfortunatly to make sure that both trees look exactly the same the sync has to be done both ways, to make sure that any programs that are only in the target directories get copied to the source.

This program has an option of being run from the command line, and can be setup as an automatic task using ‘System Agent’. This program is also very useful because it is compact and isn't just a menu option on a file manager menu.