Over the Christmas period I managed to nail one of my TODO's: "organise outlook, documents, music and pictures on the two home computers". This TODO has been around for years and I finally nailed it. Like so many TODO's in my life, many get put off and I never seem to get around to doing them because I have to set aside time to think, investigate, try a few options, decide and then actually do it.

My biggest fear was that I would lose those precious e-mails, documents, music or photos. My second greatest fear was that I was going to spend eternity comparing files and folders to work out which was the most recent. My third fear was that I would be doomed to repeat this process every year or couple of years and I wanted a permanent solution. I also had a couple more fears but I think I'll stop there J

The first solution I thought of was to write my own file and folder sync tool but I quickly got over that urge. So, rather than think about it and come up with a plan I just started doing stuff. After manually syncing for a few hours I started to get lazy. The temptations to "throw in the towel" or to "move files and hope for the best" were growing. So I stopped myself and Googled. That's when I discovered Microsoft SyncToy.

Originally the Laptop was the definitive source and then I copied all the content onto the Desktop. Now, some years later both systems are out of sync. I have my work and Mobile Phone photos on the Desktop and the Digital Camera photos and Katie's (my wife) documents on the Laptop. SyncToy allowed me to set up folder pairs and sync my documents, music and pictures on the two home computers. SyncToy never deletes anything; it just moves them to the Recycle Bin. SyncToy also lets you to preview it's proposed changes before making them. That way you can see exactly what's going to happen. That was fear No.1 sorted.

The beauty of SyncToy is that you just click a button and it takes care of the rest. It can even be scheduled by using the command line version of SyncToy! That was fear No.2 sorted. Using SyncToy has provided me with a way to keep the two shared folders in sync so I never have to manually sync files again! That's fear No.3 sorted.

I'm a programmer and a lot of this work was system admin work. At times I wished I did more system admin units at Uni. Come to think of it I didn't do any! I think that half the battle was working out how the family's digital information was going to be shared, stored and backed up. I've decided that all I need now is a Networked Storage Device (NAS) that plugs into my router. Then I could store all the documents, music, photos and videos in one place to save disk space and use SyncToy to contribute documents, music and photos from our profiles no matter what computer we are using. I'll just put that on my TODO list!

Suggestion: Have a look at the SyncToy white paper.

Humm, all I have to do is put that on the TODO list!