I’ve been using Sync Toy, a free download from Microsoft, to synchronize files.  It’s a fairly comprehensive synchronization tool that doesn’t deserve the term "toy" in its name.  You can create folder pairs that have one of the following relationships with each other:

  • Synchronize – New and updated files are copied both ways.  Renames and deletes on either side are repeated on the other.
  • Echo – New and updated files are copied left to right.  Renames and deletes on the left are repeated on the right.
  • Contribute – New and updated files are copied left to right.  Renames on the left are repeated on the right.  No deletions.  This is the same as Echo without the deletions.

(Note: Apparently there are other choices in other versions of Sync Toy, but these are the choices available in Sync Toy 2.0 Beta built 10/12/2007).

I primarily use this tool to make an exact copy of my web sites, picture, music, family documents, favorites, etc. on an external hard disk.  Things don’t change too dramatically and therefore I don’t really need a full backup solution; just a way to have a copy on another medium.  Therefore I always choose Echo for this purpose.

The one problem I hadn’t solved was to run Sync Toy automatically on a regular schedule.  I found a nice article at PC Hell that describes how to do this:

PC Hell: How to Use Microsoft Sync Toy to backup your data

The solution described there involves creating a task in Scheduled Tasks that runs Sync Toy with the -R switch.  One change that you’ll need to make with 2.0 is to run SyncToyCmd.exe instead of SyncToy.exe with the -R switch.