SyncToy v1.4 Released
With over 33,000 total views, my August 9, 2005 announcement about the release of SyncToy is one of my more popular posts. According to Sean Kelley, your comments to that post helped drive some of the fixes, features, and enhancements that have gone into more recent versions. If you ask me, this is a great example of direct community engagement via blogs.
Yesterday, we released version 1.4 of SyncToy with improved Windows Vista compatibility. If you're looking for a free and easy way to intelligently backup and synchronize your mountain of digital files, check this one out.
The team continues to ask for your feedback to enhance future versions. Of course, you can always leave feedback on my blog, but the Windows XP Photos newsgroup and the online feedback survey (available from the SyncToy Help menu) are probably a bit more direct.
Comments
Anonymous
November 14, 2006
As I mentioned in the SyncToy 1.2 blog, SyncToy is still useless for backups. It does not delete folders on the right when using echo. My backup eventually becomes a garbled mess. What a shame. So many people complained about this on the internet. I still don't understand why folders are not "sync'd" correctly when using Echo.Anonymous
December 28, 2006
Synctoy always produces an error when used in a batch file, so I can't schedule it for overnight. I had tried having a batch file to sync multiple folder pairs - each one with its own -R parameter - and it never got past the first one. Yeah, I suppose I could schedule a separate action for each folder pair, but wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft's own utility actually worked on Microsoft's own system and Microsoft's own release of .Net?Anonymous
February 28, 2007
Can't seem to schedule sync tasks on Vista since there is no executable called "SyncToy.exe"Anonymous
March 11, 2007
Harlan, Are the PC's that are getting an error when you run synctoy with a batch file using 800x600 resolution? If so, try increasing the resolution (i.e. 1024x786) and see if it still fails.Anonymous
March 23, 2007
I have found the same problem as Frank (posted Tuesday, November 14, 2006 10:54 PM) in that deleted/renamed folders in left are not removed from the right, when using Echo. Are MS going to fix this problem?Anonymous
April 05, 2007
Tony/Frank, Your voice has been heard and we are addressing these issues for v2.0. Thanks for your feedback. Sean Kelley Microsoft Data Replication and Synchronization Program ManagerAnonymous
April 23, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 22, 2007
I see this too. Is this a bug or a configuration issue? I have it scheduled under a domain admins account, which is the same account under which I configured the folder pairs. What gives? I've got a customer who is growing very impatient.Anonymous
May 28, 2007
hi Mike, thanks for a tool works as advertised for the most part, except that it reported a few files as "not found". The files do very much exist and perhaps the only thing i could find was that SyncToy was perhaps running into some sort of path length limit. the 8 files reported as "not found" are all in 8.3 "dos name" format in a path that is 116 characters long. seems like 128 chars is the underlying limit (116 + 11 + 1(period)) . Anyone know of this being a known limit/bug??Anonymous
June 19, 2007
I use this v1.3 daily to sync my laptop and desktop. Only two bugs: 1. Echo not deleting folders on right side 2. PDF sometimes give access denied so won't copy. Any thoughts?Anonymous
June 25, 2007
Hi folks! When will SyncToy 2.0 be released? I´m also desperately waiting for the eliminationon of the "doesn´t-delete-empty-folders-bug". If possible, please inform me under dirk.j.drews@gmx.de Regards - DirkAnonymous
July 12, 2007
I hate to say this, but I gave SyncToy a shot on Vista and, while it worked most of time and is pretty to look at, I found it to be VERY BLOATED AND SLOW—especially when working with lots of files (over 15000). As a matter of fact, and this is more prevalent when deleting lots of files, SyncToy frequently used tons of CPU time, over 1.5GB of RAM and brought Vista “to its knees” while severely thrashing the hard drive. The system was being burdened “like nothing I’ve ever seen before”—I couldn’t even move the mouse! Honestly, I was impressed Vista did not crash. To the developers of SyncToy, give up what you are doing and base this off of Robocopy or something similar—or create a pretty front-end to Robocopy. Ever since my recurring SyncToy nightmares and finding out that Robocopy is built into Vista, I quickly uninstalled SyncToy and have never looked back. I guess the idea of SyncToy was nice.Anonymous
July 30, 2007
We also have the problem of files and folders not being deleted with the Echo action. Any news yet when version 2.0 will be released?Anonymous
August 22, 2007
I use this v1.4 daily to sync my laptop and desktop i hjave one bug, synchronize das not deleting folders on right side.Anonymous
August 30, 2007
mode echo deletes files instead of overwriting them when files are updated on the left. This software is dangerous AlfredAnonymous
October 11, 2007
I also am having the problem with echo not deleting files from the right which were removed from the left. Unfortunately that means it's useless for making backups in my case. And it's very disappointing because the reason I am using MS SyncToy is because of a bug in MS Vista which is preventing me from completing transfers of large amounts of files to my external drive. So, any word on when 2.0 might be ready?Anonymous
October 28, 2007
This is just a great little app and I use it at home to back up all of my data. However, I am recently getting an error: "The application failed to initialize properly (0x000007b). Click on OK to terminate the application." I have ensured my computer and all .NET frameworks (1,2, & 3) are up to date, I have uninstalled and reinstalled the application, I have researched and researched a possible solution, yet I have come up with nothing. So, bothering the dev team is my last resort. Any possible help?Anonymous
December 02, 2007
SyncToy v2.0 in ECHO mode is still grossly messed up. Will not overwrite updated files from left to right.... Oh well !!!Anonymous
December 23, 2009
The comment has been removed