Ever wanted to keep two folders in two different locations synchronized in real time? Maybe you have a folder on your desktop or laptop and you want to sync it with another PC in your house or with an external storage device like a USB hard disk or with a storage device. network mount (NAS)?
There are many freeware programs that can help you sync two folders, but very few of them do a good job of synchronizing folders in real time. What I mean by real time is that the user doesn’t have to manually open the program and run the sync or have to wait for the program to run periodically.
In this article, I will write about a freeware program that you can use to set up real-time synchronization between two folders stored in different locations. This is useful for backup purposes or if you’re working in a team and want to avoid using a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive.
Dsynchronize
Dsynchronize is a freeware program written by several developers in Poland whose website looks like it’s from the 1990s! However, don’t judge a book by its cover because the shows he writes are excellent.
First, when you visit the above link, you have to scroll down a bit to get to the right program. At first I thought I was on the wrong site because I kept reading about his first show called Dspeech. Scroll down through that and over to Dshutdown and you should see Dsynchronize.
As noted before, it’s a pretty bad looking site. Thankfully, the software is clean and doesn’t contain any junk, malware, ads, etc. Once you download the ZIP file, go ahead and extract all the files and then run the application file.
When you run the app for the first time, you’ll see two boxes at the top for source and destination. We need to configure them first.
Check the box for Source and then press enter. You should now see two buttons appear on the right: Filter and Browse.
Click Browse and choose your first folder. Once selected, you can click Filter if you want to exclude certain file types or to exclude subfolders. If you want everything synced, then don’t worry about the filter button.
Now that we have selected two folders, we can start configuring options. By default, sync will only work when you click Synchronize button. According to the docs, you should do a normal sync before enabling realtime sync.
Before we do any synchronization, though, let’s configure the options. For starters, if you want to keep the changes synchronized between both folders, you should check Two-way sync. This will automatically activate Copy only newer files box too. I also recommend you to check Create directory if does not exist so that when you create a new folder in a folder it will automatically create the same folder in the other synced folder.
Another important option is Backup change. This is useful, if you want to keep some version of changes in case you don’t intend to delete something or you want to see previous versions of a document, etc.
There are several other options, which are self explanatory. If you are confused, make sure to read the TXT file located in the directory where the application was unzipped.
Go ahead and click Synchronize to complete a sync. Once you’ve done this, you can now make some changes and then do another sync to make sure it works the way you want it to.
To get real-time synchronization, you must check Real-time sync bottom box Special option. Now, if you leave the program window open and start adding, removing or updating files in the source or destination folder, you will find that the folders are updated automatically without any intervention by the user. user.
This is still not ideal since you have to keep the program window open, but the developer is smart enough to understand that. Below Timer syncthere are two other options you need to check: Auto start and Autostart as a service.
When you try to test the Autostart button, you will get a message stating that you must start Dsynchronize as Administrator. To do this, close the program, then right click on the application file and select Run as administrator.
Now you will be able to check Auto start The box has no message. Next, let’s check Autostart as a service and you will get a popup where you have to click Service settings button.
When you do that, Start service button will become clickable. Click that and don’t worry about Accounts, Passwords etc. Just make sure System account is checked. Click Accomplished and you will see the program now says it is running as a service.
That’s it! Now, close the program and start updating, adding or removing data from your folders and see those actions synchronized instantly with the other folder.
Overall, the program worked really well in my tests and I was impressed with the speed and the fact that I was able to keep backups of the changes and see the log file of everything that was changed. update, add or delete. If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Interesting!
