A Goodsyncing feeling

We just headed out for the second week of hosting a Network World event and went through the usual flurry of activity that precedes being out of the office for more than a couple of days.

The problem is that if you have any intention of being productive while on the road, leaving your office environment is painful. On your laptop and desktop you want your current and historical e-mail, and all the documents that you are working on.

Synchronizing e-mail between PCs when you are using Outlook but not Exchange is relatively easy - we use SyncPST from Wisco, which we wrote about in February.

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We just headed out for the second week of hosting a Network World event and went through the usual flurry of activity that precedes being out of the office for more than a couple of days.

The problem is that if you have any intention of being productive while on the road, leaving your office environment is painful. On your laptop and desktop you want your current and historical e-mail, and all the documents that you are working on.

Synchronizing e-mail between PCs when you are using Outlook but not Exchange is relatively easy - we use SyncPST from Wisco, which we wrote about in February.

And we shouldn't have a problem on this trip syncing our current working set of documents. We've been using a great utility called Goodsync from Siber Systems, those clever people who brought us AI Roboform, another utility we reviewed.

Running under all versions of Windows from 98 to XP, Goodsync can synchronize files and folders on local Windows drives as well as on Windows shares.

Goodsync's synchronization algorithm can work unidirectionally (from one file or directory to another), bidirectionally (to and from a pair of files or directories), or n-directionally (keeping an arbitrary number of files or directories synchronized).

Goodsync is reliable; by using only standard file input/output rather than drivers or system hooks, it avoids conflicts with most anti-spyware and other system issues. We haven't found a problem with normal operation, and it was only when we did ridiculous things, such as open both copies of a synchronized file under one copy of Word, that we could get Goodsync to complain.

Goodsync builds a database of file and folder metadata, and detects changes by monitoring file attributes, size and creation time stamp.

Siber Systems notes that it doesn't pay attention to file modification time. The reason: If files are created by one PC and synchronized to another and their clocks are different, the modification time stamp is useless. Even so, every now and then, particularly when removable devices such as USB thumb drives are used, Goodsync will ask the user to confirm whether synchronization should be carried out.

The algorithm also was designed so that two or more copies of Goodsync can synchronize the same set of files and folders without causing collisions and network problems, so shares disconnecting in the middle of synchronization won't result in damaged files.

A set of files and folders to synchronize is set up as a job, with multiple jobs defined to run simultaneously and filters for each job to include or exclude files. You also can specify when synchronization is to occur. You can even opt to have the Windows scheduler run the job.

Importantly, Goodsync can handle deleted files and folders flexibly and intelligently. You can specify that deleted files and folders are to be synchronized and deletion is to be final, and that files are to be moved to the recycle bin, saved in a folder belonging to Goodsync or moved to a user-defined location. The same choices are available for file versions.