SyncToy is a nifty little app released by Microsoft as a Microsoft XP & Vista PowerToy. Microsoft PowerToys are a bunch of value added Windows applications which include things like Power Calculator, ClearType Tuner and SyncToy! I plan on doing an overview of Microsoft PowerToys in the future but for now you can have a quick look at the rest of them here.

SyncToy can be used to easily backup your data to a mapped network drive, shared folder, external hard disk drive or flash drive.

SyncToy Screenshot 1

SyncToy provides you with a lot of flexibility for determining how you want your data to be backed up and can even be scheduled for automatic backups.

At home I use SyncToy to backup my Documents & Settings folder (this contains all my documents, email, address book & photos, internet favourites etc) from my main computer to a shared network folder on one of my other computers.

You can download SyncToy here. SyncToy requires .NET Framework 2.0 to work. If you dont have this Microsoft Update installed it may ask you to do this first. You can get the update from here.

SyncToy uses left and right folder pairs to create backups. The left folder represents your source location, the right folder represents your destination location eg. If you wanted to backup your My Documents folder to external hard drive (G:). Left folder would be C:\Documents and Settings\{profile name}\My Documents, and right folder would just be G:\

You would then have to choose one of the backup actions SyncToy provides you with:

  • 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. (Probably most popular and common action)
  • Subscribe - Updated files on the right are copied to the left.
  • Contribute – New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames on the left are repeated on the right. No deletions. (My personal favourite as it allows me to keep histories of files I have deleted from my computer. This has already served me well once when I realised I had deleted a file a few months back which I actually still needed!)
  • Combine – New and updated files are copied both ways. Nothing happens to renamed and deleted files.

The great thing about SyncToy, as you have probably noticed is that it only backs up what is new and/or updated. This means that the first time you backup it will probably take a while to complete, but subsequent backups will take a much shorter time as it is only backing up what has changed!

Hope you enjoy SyncToy :) I will post a quick tutorial later about how to schedule SyncToy for automatic updates.

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