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home and office

An area of the forum to post ideas for new products or discuss things that are not related to 2BrightSparks products
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Patrick
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Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2018 5:03 pm

home and office

Post by Patrick »

I’m wondering which version of SyncBack I need to purchase (I've used the free version for many years).

I have a specific network folder at the office in which I do all my work while I’m there, and a laptop and external drive that I bring home. On some days I work from home. My office network folder has a fairly simple directory structure, which I have duplicated on my external backup drive. When I’m at home I work directly with the files and folders in my external drive.

At the beginning of each day at the office, I’d like to sync (not sure if I’m using the right backup type here) any changes I might have made to my external drive's files and folders (create, duplicate, delete, move) while at home, with my network folder.

At the end of the day at the office, I’d like to sync any changes I made to my network files and folders, with my external drive.

My thinking is that if I forget to sync in the morning and sync later in the day after I have made changes to the network files and folders (destination), SyncBack Pro would ask me to confirm which files or folders to keep or discard.

I’m not sure if the scheme I have described is the most logical for what I need. Any suggestions to improve it would be greatly appreciated. Basically I want the files to reside in two locations, and the ability to work on those files in two locations.

Thanks,
Patrick
Conrad Chung
2BrightSparks Staff
2BrightSparks Staff
Posts: 152
Joined: Thu Dec 05, 2013 3:01 pm

Re: home and office

Post by Conrad Chung »

Please note that we don't actually offer a bespoke profile/schema design service, but I'll offer some advice for this exception.

You can try creating an Intelligent Synchronization profile, but note that Sync is strictly a two-way comparison process (A-to-B, B-to-A) and we typically do not recommend users to sync to multiple devices as unwanted overwrites/deletes on files could easily occur if a strict running order sequence is not met.

It is possible to set up a few profiles to multi-sync them across several devices. However, there are several important details/drawbacks to take note of when making a schema of multi-way sync profiles.

The process will require at least the following steps to ensure complete file synchronization.

1. Home PC <sync> Ext Drv

2. Office <sync> Ext Drv

3. Home PC <sync> Ext Drv

Step 3 is required for changes in Step 2 to be synced back to A.

IMPORTANT NOTE - Please ensure that you are running this design order as per the listed sequence so that data changes in all locations are properly synced. Don't run these profiles concurrently or all at once. Don't skip any steps.

It is important to note that no two (or more) users/PCs can work on the same local file/s at the same time in-between such a schema sync. This would introduce multiple versions of the file (containing different sets of data) to be present on different machines. When the sync process triggers, it will cause the eventual overwrite of one over the other (whichever file with the older Last Modified time stamp will be replaced by the newer, thereby changes in the older file is never replicated and lost forever).

During the schema run/multi-run period, do not let any user or process make any file changes/deletion within these devices or collisions will likely occur.

Do note that if any other process(es) upload any files to this 'group', they would not have the meta-data we use and rely on so they might be processed in unexpected ways.
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