Vista and Synctoy

alexbarnett — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 16:47:00 GMT

I took the plunge over the weekend and clean installed Vista RC1 and Office 12 (2007 Office).

All working sweet, except for SyncToy (latest version is 1.2) which doesn't run on Vista. I found this post by Ed Bott, citing a comment left by the SyncToy program manager at Microsoft on one of Ed's previous posts, confirming the next version will have Vista support.

In the meantime, if you are running Windows XP and a need syncing app (backing up to a networked drive, synchronizing music, picture, video files across machines, etc), Synctoy works great, really easy to use and it's free. I know some people who tried earlier version but were frustrated by the inability to support the maximum length for folder paths (my Dad made this loud and clear to me...). This was fixed in the 1.2 release.

Unfortunately, it does'nt provide an interface for scheduling (yet - I really hope this feature makes it's way into a future release), but it can be run as a Scheduled Task from Windows:

To schedule a task using the XP operating system:

1. From the Start menu, select All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Scheduled Tasks.

2. Select Add scheduled task to start the Scheduled Task Wizard. You will see a list of possible programs to run.

3. SyncToy may appear as an option in the list. If SyncToy does not appear in the list, click Browse and go find it.

4.The wizard will next prompt you to enter how often you want to run the scheduled SyncToy (for example, daily, weekly, et cetera). Select a frequency.

5. The next page asks when to start the task. Select a start time.

6. The next page asks for the user name and password to run the program under. Enter your user name and password.

7. The final page contains an option to open the properties dialog when the wizard ends. Select this checkbox.

8. Modify the Run textbox to include the –R command line option. –R all by itself will run all folder pairs that are active for run all. If you want to run just a single folder pair, add –R“My Pair” to the end of the command line. Note: there is a space before the hyphen but not one after the R. If the folder pair name contains a space, surround it with quotation marks, as the example above shows. For another example, assume that SyncToy is in the folder named C:\My Folder and that you want to run a folder pair named "My folder pair." Enter the command line as follows, including the quotation marks: "C:\My Folder\SyncToy.exe" -R"My folder pair." Note that there are two sets of quotation marks in this case: one is around the path to the SyncToy program file and the other surrounds the folder pair name.

Alex Barnett blog : Synctoy, Vista

Vista and Synctoy