Syncing refers to the process of making sure that files are available on all connected computer systems, and Windows Live Sync is one of the software programs to achieve this goal.

Windows Live Sync is part of Microsoft’s Windows Live software suite. A Windows Live account is needed to use the program, users without one can create a free account easily at the Windows Live website.

The Windows Live Sync software is available on that website, for Windows and Mac systems actually, as well. The software needs to be installed on every system that needs to be included in the synchronization process.

The program places an icon in the system tray after installation which contains links to settings and preferences. Start with a left-click on the icon and the selection of Sync Website.

This opens the Windows Live Sync website with options to configure personal and shared folders. Personal folders are only accessible by the user account creating them while shared folders can be shared with Windows Live friends.

windows live sync

All folders of linked computers can be selected for synchronization. It is for instance possible to select the documents folder to be synced with all other computers, the Firefox or Thunderbird profile, Outlook emails or anything else that is stored in folders.

windows live sync personal folders

Each personal or shared folder that is added this way is displayed on the Windows Live Sync startup screen along with the different computer systems configured to sync those selected folders.

The selected folders can be configured individually to either synchronize the folders automatically whenever the PC has an online connection and Windows Live Sync is running or on-demand which will only synchronize the data if it is accessed by a user.

Windows Live Sync has several limitations. It is for instance not recommended to sync data that is in use on more than one computer system as it can lead to sync errors and other problems.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 users have the option to download Windows Live Essentials Sync Beta instead which offers several additional features including storing data on Windows Live SkyDrive to access the data from web browsers. It has to be noted that this version of Sync is available as a beta, and therefor not suited for productive environments without proper testing.

The main benefit of Windows Live Sync is that it is easy to use. It takes only a few clicks to configure the whole syncing process. The synchronization should work out of the box on most computer systems, the settings of the program contain options to test the ports that are needed to sync the data.

The basic Weave client uses Mozilla web servers to store the encrypted information so that all Weave installations can access the data regardless of the states of the other computer systems running Weave.

Weave users need to create an account – or more than one – that needs to be used on all computer systems to authorize the computer system so that the data can be transferred.

The data that gets synchronized this way can be selected in the the options which can be interesting for users who might prefer not to sync the open tabs or the browsing history.

A Weave server was released as well which can be used by companies to implement Weave on their servers so that no third party servers like the Mozilla Weave servers are used for data storage and transfers.

Mobile users can look forward to Weave 1.0 being released tomorrow for Maemo with the likelihood that support for other devices is expanded in the near future once the Firefox mobile developers start supporting those devices in upcoming releases.

Weave can be downloaded from the Mozilla website. The add-on is compatible with all Firefox 3.5 to 3.7x versions.

Update: Mozilla Weave the add-on is no longer available. Mozilla has however integrated its synchronization functionality natively into the Firefox web browser. Firefox users who want to sync data between different computer systems can now open the Options and switch to the Sync tab there to configure the feature. It is necessary to create an account though as data is currently synced using Mozilla servers.

Goodsync provides the typical left / right interface that many file synchronization software programs use. One interesting aspect is that it can not only be used to keep files in sync but also to backup them. Both operations are started as so called jobs. A job consists of a few steps that the user has to configure.

A file synchronization requires the selection of two folders that should be kept in sync. This can be used to sync emails, documents, music and anything practically anything else that is needed in more than one folder.

The analyze button will scan both directories and display the folders, files, sizes and additional information of both sides. The program will also list the space requirements on both hard drives if the synchronization is started. All files and the direction that they are copied will be shown as well.

Goodsync can also change the display mode so that only conflicts, errors and other information such as the sync state will be displayed.

Users can finetune the process before starting the synchronization. It is for example possible to exclude folders or files from synchronization or change their direction. The default sync direction is a two-way sync but it is possible to change that to a one-way sync easily in the options.

Filters can be used to exclude certain files or folders from the synchronization. One of the most important aspects of a file synchronization software is the support of storage space. GoodSync supports synchronization and backups on local hard drives, network drives, ftp, sftp, Amazon S3, WebDav and WinMobile hardware. It is therefor no problem to sync files from ftp or sftp to the local computer.

Once everything has been configured according to your wishes you can the automatic options. It’s much like a scheduler. You can set the interval or event when the file synchronization software should analyze or sync files and what the software should do if conflicts are encountered.

The options are also the place to create global filters and to change other options like the buffer size or if locked files should be copied.

Experienced users will like the sheer amount of command line options that are provided by the file synchronization software. There is practically a switch for every option of the software to synchronize or backup files. It is possible to import or export the job list to run it on multiple computers.

Every user is able to create file synchronization or backup jobs with GoodSync in a few easy steps. Experts will love all the settings and options to tweak the software.

Five licenses of GoodSync are up for grabs. To win one simply leave a comment and tell us what you would sync or backup with it.

The interface of USB Syncer requires minimal user input. The user needs to choose the source folder on the hard drive and the destination folder on the USB device. The contents of the source folder will be copied to the USB device whenever the USB device is connected to the computer. Contents that are stored in the folder on the USB device will be deleted before the transfer starts.

The software program comes in an early beta version that has some limitations that are explained during installation and in the readme file. The application might not work properly if more than one removable device is connected to the computer during synchronization.

The software will ask the user if he wants to perform a synchronization if the user selects the Synchronize Now link int the Windows Start Menu. If a device gets detected that has been connected to the computer the program will ask if the user wants to synchronize the folder with that device.

Then there is the trend to use a desktop computer and laptop or netbook or mobile Internet device and the desire to have the same data available on all computers. Data like contacts, emails, photos and even bookmarks is something that the user who is working with multiple devices wants to have in sync.

Microsoft SyncToy is the second installment of the synchronization software by Microsoft which has the goal of delivering an easy to use data synchronization software for Windows users. SyncToy comes in a version for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista operating systems and requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 or above.

Microsoft SyncToy works with so called folder pairs called the left and right folder. After selecting two folders from connected partitions or devices the user has to define the type of synchronization that should take place, he has the option to..

• Synchronize: New Files and Modifications are copied to the other folder. Renaming or deleting files will do so at the other folder as well.
• Echo: All modifications at the left folder are executed on the right folder as well. Changes on the right folder have no impact on the left folder.
• Contribute: All modifications at the left folder except deletions are executed on the right folder

After creating the folder pair and selecting the synchronization option custom options can be changed. Those custom options make it possible to exclude certain files and folders from the synchronization and to make file contents a criteria for checking if files are identical.

To be effective Microsoft SyncToy has to be added to the Windows Scheduler to be run regularly. This is done by creating a new task in the Windows Scheduler that makes use of SyncToyCmd.exe and the -R parameter which has the effect that all synchronizations that are set to Run are executed.

The Thunderbird add-on gContactSync tries to make it easier by providing an uncomplicated way to synchronize the contact data. The user has to enter his gmail login details into Thunderbird after installing the add-on and make some configuration changes, for example the interval of the synchronization.

Thunderbird unfortunately saves contact information different than Gmail does which means that manual adjustments are required in Gmail to take this into account. By default, each informational piece about the address, like street and zip code are sorted into different lines in Thunderbird. This means that users would have to change those information in Gmail to fit the layout in Thunderbird.

That’s a bit problematic especially if a lot contacts with address information have been added to Gmail. The process is explained in this flash tutorial. Once that has been done the Google contacts can be imported into Thunderbird and the Thunderbird contacts can be synced with Google Mail by dropping them in the new address book that gets created in the process.

The main features that make it stand out are tabbed browsing, synchronization and the duplicate finder. Tabbed browsing is definitely the easiest to explain. Two panes are by default displayed like in any other file manager. If I wanted to open another local or remote directory I would have to open a new WinSCP instance. Capivara makes use of tabs to avoid that several instances of the same application have to be opened.

A right-click on a tab opens a menu with the option to add another tab to that pane which can connect to local or remote servers. Synchronization is the next feature. As I said earlier this is also supported by WinSCP and many other clients but Capivara supports four different modes including SHA-1 and MD5 sync.

Before files are copied and deleted they are shown in a preview pane which displays all file operations. The last feature is the duplicate finder. It compares the files and folders that reside in two root directories giving the user the options to move or delete duplicate files.

Capivara has some shortcomings though. The local file system will only be displayed if the user presses the connect button and selects it from the menu. That’s a bit complicated in my opinion. The right-click menu is not working everywhere. A user has to press a button to create a new directory while most are probably used to right-click the mouse to do so.

As some of the more regular readers may know, I’m all into the whole ‘portable’ thing, and am constantly looking for ways to use stealthy software, sync my data or access it wherever I go. So it’s not surprising I stumbled across the SyncKolab Thunderbird extension some time ago looking for a possibility to sync my contacts across different computers as easy as my bookmarks using Foxmarks. Didn’t turn out that time, I just couldn’t get it to work.

But now, you may have guessed it already where this is heading, version 1.0 is out and, what can I say, it works like a charm, and not only for my contacts, but for my lightning-powered to-do’s and calendar items as well!

The whole thing uses the Kolab ‘protocol’ (in lack for a better word), which uses iCals and E-Mails containing xml-files to, among other things, store the items in your IMAP-Folder.

There’s a pretty good tutorial how to set it up as well, but it’s principle is rather simple. Choose an IMAP-Account, the items you want to have synced (contacts, calendar and to-do; the latter two require lightning to be installed) and where to store the data in the IMAP folder structure. I used a new folder named Synckolab containing subfolders for each of the groups, though I don’t know if it’s necessary to split them up.

Conflicts are resolved by using a pre-defined setting (always use server-side or client-side), or by asking the user, which is always my personal weapon of choice.

The whole thing also works with a specialized server component as well as different clients such as KDE’s Kontact for instance. Check out the wikipedia-entry if you’re interested.

The main program window is actually the only window of the program. You can add source files and folders on the left side and their destination on the right. Several options are available to define the synchronization further. You can opt to only sync newer files, create folders if they are not existing, use a bidirectional synchronization, exit or shutdown at the end and to reduce disk fragmentation by deleting files before replacing them.

Dsynchronize has a build in scheduler with several options. Users can choose to synchronize in intervals of x hours / minutes, synchronize every day, specify week days or days of the month. A real time (experimental) feature is available as well which synchronizes as soon as changes are made to files and folders specified.

Dsynchronize is compatible to Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT and Windows Vista and available in English, German, Italian and Korean.

It is possible to copy files to and from a remote location using sessions or synchronizing files to and from the local computer with the remote computer. You can define when the session that you created should be started. This can be either manual, a certain delay in seconds, when changes are detected in the directories that should be transferred / synced or by chaining the start with other sessions.

Files are either checked by checksum if you choose to synchronize the files on the remote computer with the local ones or by the last modified date if you choose to synchronize the local files with the remote ones.

You could for instance have one copy of bookmarks files, contacts, to do lists and documents on a computer at work and synchronize the files with the computer at home to always work with the up to date version of the file. Also great for backing up certain files regularly.

Auto Ftp 2 can be controlled with command line options as well making it a very powerful tool for batch processing. (Start the synchronization every time Windows starts for example)