Keep your files backed up using Microsoft SyncToy
By Jin Nan Goto
Everyone will agree that backing up your data is incredibly important. Except people often don’t realize how important it is until they lose a file that they need. SyncToy2.0 is a free utility from Microsoft that will Sync two folders and it is useful for backing up your data.
Backing up to an external hard drive can be tedious and requires a lot of planning and thinking. SyncToy does a great job in automating the process. In SyncToy you will specify “folder pairs” and when you run SyncToy it will copy all changes from one folder to the other. You can get SyncToy 2.0 here.
The first step is to create the folder pairs in SyncToy. This is so SyncToy knows which folders need to be synchronized. This step is fairly straightforward as you simply browse for the folders. I select my “documents” folder and a corresponding “documents” folder on my 150 GB Western Digital External hard drive.
Then you need to chose how you want to copy files between the two folders.
- Synchronize: The copying works in both directions. All new files, changes, deletions on one folder is copied over to the other and vice-versa.
- Echo: The copying only works in one direction. New files, changes, deletions, and renames are moved from the first folder to the second. However changes, new files, and deletions are not copied from the second folder to the first.
- Contribute: Works in a similar way as Echo, but deletions are not copied over from one folder to another.
SyncToy 2.0 External Link
