BACK UP AND SYNCHRONISE BETTER
7 Synchronise your folders
Synchronising folders means you’ll always have a current copy of your files that you can disconnect and take with you should you need to work away from your main machine. You can set up synchronisation using the free personal edition of Synchredible (www.snipca.com/42053).
Make sure your external drive is connected and, on the first screen, select the folder you want to back up by clicking the folder icon below Folder 1, and the folder to which you want to synchronise its contents by clicking the folder icon below Folder 2. We’re synchronising our Documents folder to an empty external drive, which is connected as D:( 1 in our screenshot).
Click ‘Next’, then specify how the synchronisation should be handled. You can sync just from Folder 1 to Folder 2 by clicking the left-hand tick box 2 . If you do, any file you add to or delete from Folder 1 will be added to or deleted from Folder 2, but anything you do to Folder 2 will have no effect on Folder 1. Ticking only the right-hand box 3 does the opposite, so operations you perform on Folder 2 will be reflected in Folder 1. However, we want to keep the folders fully synchronised at all times, which is how online-storage services like Dropbox behave, so we’ve ticked both boxes.
Click ‘Next’ twice, then optionally specify whether Synchredible should ignore any specified file types, such as large downloads that would quickly eat into your available space. Click the Exclude tab, followed by Add, then select ‘Manual filter’ in the dropdown menu. Specify the extension (such as *.iso to exclude all files with an iso extension) or folder (such as /backups/ for a backups folder inside Folder 1, if it exists) that you want to exclude.
Click ‘Next’ again, then expand the ‘Synchronization on changes’ section