Folder Synchronization Made Easy

App Review : Synkron

I’ve spent the last month or so look­ing at var­i­ous back­up and syn­chro­niza­tion options try­ing to find the per­fect solu­tion. While I use Time Machine as a full back­up solu­tion for every­thing on my lap­top, I now need­ed some­thing to sync just a few fold­ers on a net­work stor­age drive with sev­er­al com­put­ers around the house. I found count­less apps, Automator scripts, even ter­mi­nal com­mands — but every­thing kept com­ing up short. Finally my back­up prayers were answered. The app is called Synkron and it will sur­prise you.

Synkron’s Main Window

First, some basics. Synkron is cross-platform work­ing on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is free and licensed under the GNU GPL. Documentation is ade­quate but with all the fea­tures this appli­ca­tion has to offer — and the poten­tial for seri­ous screw ups if you sync/delete the wrong files — it could be improved. The abun­dance of fea­tures also hurts the UI with some key options being hid­den in menus and tabs. Both of these things are graph­i­cal rather than tech­ni­cal. Once you dig into it though, the power is awesome.

At its core, Synkron com­pares fold­ers and files using names and their last mod­i­fied date/time stamp. Newer files replace older files; older files are moved to a stor­age fold­er in case they need to be restored later. You set up jobs to orga­nize which fold­ers are being synced and what options are used. You can then pre­view what changes would hap­pen by ana­lyz­ing your sync. If every­thing looks right, then actu­al­ly run the sync.

What types of jobs can you set up? Try the following:

• Traditional one-way back­up from mas­ter fold­er to slave folder
• Compare and sync across two or more folders
• Sync source fold­er with des­ti­na­tion and then empty source folder
• Combine mul­ti­ple source fold­ers into one des­ti­na­tion folder

And all of these jobs can be auto­mat­ed. Once you have your para­me­ters setup, you can run a job once or set a sched­ule to sync peri­od­i­cal­ly — like every minute or five or ten — or just at cer­tain times of the day. In addi­tion to sched­ul­ing and restor­ing, you can also fil­ter files, fold­ers, and exten­sions to not be backed up.

Tip: Two options not on by default that you are probably going to want to turn on can be found in the advanced menu. They are “Propagate deletions” and “Detect collisions”.

Propagate dele­tions tells Snykron to keep track of delet­ed files and make sure they are not recre­at­ed in the next sync. With detect col­li­sions turned on, Synkron will warn you when a file has changed in both the loca­tions so you can decide which ver­sion should be kept and copied.

Synkron’s Schedule Tab

Synkron has com­plete­ly stream­lined my back­up and sync jobs. The ver­sa­til­i­ty and range of con­fig­u­ra­tions is absolute­ly amaz­ing. I can’t think of a back­up sit­u­a­tion this appli­ca­tion could­n’t han­dle. It might take a minute to sort through and setup all the options, but once done you can set and for­get it with excel­lent sched­ul­ing options. This is def­i­nite­ly a 9 out 10 if I had to give it a score. Download Synkron today and keep every­thing in sync.

Pros

• FREE
• Cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux)
• One-way, two-way, mul­ti­ple way syn­chro­niza­tion of files and folders
• Automatic sched­ul­ing of back­ups and syncs
• Ability to restore old files

Cons

• Needs minor doc­u­men­ta­tion updates
• Last update was January 2011 (at time of writing)