kelemvor Posted April 15, 2014 Report Share Posted April 15, 2014 Howdy, I've been using the MS SyncToy for years to keep pictures in sync between my wife's laptop, my laptop, and our media PC. This works well enough but I'm looking for something I can automated and that just runs all the time. I think BT Sync would work well but had some questions. Is it possible to do a 3-way sync between the 3 machines? Would I have to pick one machine as the master and let the other two sync to it? If I have 3 PCs and #1 is the master and 2 and 3 sync to/from it, what happens if I add a file to machine 2? Does it sync up to 1 and then 3 sees it and it syncs down to 3 so all 3 end up the same? How does it handle moving files and syncing folders? If I move a file from folder 1 to folder 2, does it treat that as a delete and redownload or is it smart enough to just move the file where it lives? SyncToy is hit or miss in this area and many times it does a delete and an add instead of just a move or rename. Does anyone forsee any problems with doing it this way? I want the media machien to be the master backup so I'm wondering if I'd just do a BT Sync between the two laptops and then still use Synctoy to go to the media machine on a manual kickoff just in case something goes horribly wrong on oneof the laptops and the mess filters down to that machine. Any other advice, options, opinions? Thanks!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreatMarko Posted April 15, 2014 Report Share Posted April 15, 2014 Is it possible to do a 3-way sync between the 3 machines?Yes! Would I have to pick one machine as the master and let the other two sync to it?No - under normal use, all your machines would have the same priority If I have 3 PCs and #1 is the master and 2 and 3 sync to/from it, what happens if I add a file to machine 2?Assuming your using full-access Secrets on all your devices, the file added to machine 2 will Sync with machines 1 and 3 also Does it sync up to 1 and then 3 sees it and it syncs down to 3 so all 3 end up the same?It will Sync to 1 and 3 simultaneously from 2 How does it handle moving files and syncing folders? If I move a file from folder 1 to folder 2, does it treat that as a delete and redownload or is it smart enough to just move the file where it lives?It will currently treat it as the file being deleted and a new file added Does anyone forsee any problems with doing it this way? I want the media machien to be the master backup so I'm wondering if I'd just do a BT Sync between the two laptops and then still use Synctoy to go to the media machine on a manual kickoff just in case something goes horribly wrong on oneof the laptops and the mess filters down to that machine.If you want one device to be a "master" and simply "backup" to (rather than sync with) other devices, you would need to use read-only secrets on the devices being backed up to to ensure changes on those don't propagate back to the "master".It's not advisible to run two different synchronization tools (i.e. BitTorrent Sync and SyncToy) on the same set of data - it will likely cause you issues! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piotrnik Posted April 16, 2014 Report Share Posted April 16, 2014 BT sync also puts deleted items in the .syncarchive folder, so in case they are deleted on one computer mistakenly they can still be restored. I believe the default time to keep them for is 30 days, though you can change that in the advanced options. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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