Sync Folders Pro App Reviews

I wish I had found this years ago. Great app, with pretty much every master/slave combination you can think of, file filters, folder filters, etc. It will even mount and dismount drives to complete a sync job. Simple enough for a beginner, with plenty of heft for those with more specific needs. I was also impressed with the developer support. I sent off a question, and got an immediate response back with exactly what I needed.

Despite my three-star rating, you cannot claim that the app is too expensive. I am moving from a $99 program (bought years ago) to a $8 app…so I was a bit cautious. Thus, I ran a few tests…creating identical folders on two machines and then doing different things to A and B and then running the app to compare what was done with what should have been done. It is clear the the “Pro” version comes with a lot of capability, but the fact that I couldn’t get it to work on a simple A<->B mode sync “out of the box” brings down the grade. For example, I actually had to choose the “File Structure Read Mode” value of 2 (instead of the recommended 1 value). In my case, A was a remotely mounted disk and B was the local folder. In mode 1, deleting something in B was always accompanied by the app putting the files back on B (i.e., they existed on A, so they were copied to B). If i deleted something on A, it worked okay. With the mode 2 value, things worked as expected (the comparison process is slower, but at this point I justed wanted it to work…and i am willing to trade time for reliability). Another problematic (or at least unforgiving) “feature” is that if you “goof up” the file ACL values (i.e., something is not readable in one folder), the app treats this as no file and *deletes* the companion file in the other folder (in the A<->B sync, anyway). the previous program that i used threw an error in this case and did not delete the same file in the companion folder. Basically, I saw the same files being deleted from B when I knew that existed on A (but the read bit was not set properly…which was totally a user error; and a learning experience with me for using this app). Finally, it would have been helpful if there were a mode (or if there is such a thing, that it is easier to find) that allowed one to display all the changes that were calculated to be performed, but required the user to actively proceed to the next step (the actual file copying/deleting). However, despite these things, the price is a bargain and the program does what i need it to do. the 3-stars reflects the difficulty encountered in getting it to do these things. I read the documentation, but it is less helpful than one might wish. I could go as high as 3.5 stars. …but 4 would imply more than I can justify, at least with my limited usage/testing.

I have two really great needs for this product, and it performs very well. First, I’m a semi pro photographer. I capture anywhere from 500 to 1000 photos and file per session. I need to immediately import these from the camera and then duplicate the files on other drives. Sometime after reviewing, I realize some photo need to be deleted or modified. Rather than now try to find the same files on each drive, sync folders pro does it for me. It saves hours of work. Second, I run a consulting business, where I take a data dump from the client, clean up the data and files and folders, introducing new engineerng on drawings. I copy this data structure across several drives for backup. I use sync folders pro to automate exactly which folders on each drive need to be compared and files replaced. The author is very quick to respond to questions and very helpful. Be sure to check the ? (help file) on the website so you understand what the different backup modes will do. The interface is very simple, but it doesn’t need to be anything else. It does exactly what you think it should do, plus, you can add a icon to the status bar (up top) and see the syncs that are automated, or in-process. My one bit of feedback would be to change the backup symbols to plain text or the option to change to symbols plus text so that I can be sure I selected the correct backup method.

When I first started using this app, the syncing was flawless. Now I am getting files moved into the trash folders when syncing bidirectionally, and having to go back and manually restore a lot of folders and files that have been moved. This is not fun and I can’t depend on the app at this point.

App is now frequently moving my files into the Deleted Synch folders whenever it runs….Major flaw in program. Have made no changes in my system

This used to work great, but now I find that it I have to go back to the deleted files folder and restore files after every sync. I set it up to copy from A to B and only delete folders deleted on side A, but now I’m seeing fles deleted from A instead of copied to be.

While this seems to be able to sync basic files okay, it errors on symbolic links, even when the destination supports them. The network resource support relies on the local path to be accessible and is incapable of syncing otherwise. The realtime sync just seems to not work at all as new files are created or deleted and nothing happens until I manually kick off a sync. This is a shame as this is the one feature this app “has” which others do not and the entire reason I chose it. The user interface is awkward at best and contains loads of annoyances. For instance editing an existing path and clicking cancel sets the path to empty. I would not recommend this application to anybody as a quick search will turn up loads of others which do the same thing, only better. Except for the non-functional realtime sync, that is.

WIth this latest update, this becomes a perfect app for my use. I have used it for all kinds of things, and have bought it for personal and business use. For personal, I went through a huge project ripping all my CDs (collected pretty much from the day CDs were released) using multiple computers and saving to one drive. I used Sync Folders Pro to transfer the files. Often I was not sure whether I had already copied something over but using this app I didn’t have to worry about that since it compares source and destination every time it is run. For business, I use it to automatically back up two NAS devices to an series of connected internal hard drives, on a weekly schedule. Often there are corrupted files which cannot be copied, and thanks to this update, I will now be notified of backup errors via email. Love it.

This App keeps your computer from going to sleep (Period). I tried everything, setting the Auto Sync to 900 seconds which comes out to 15 minute and setting my sleep time to 10 minutes, but that didn’t fix the Problem. The only thing that fix the problem was to quit the App, which defeats the purpose of this App. I’d like for my computer to go to slepp from time to time when not in use. Thank you for listening to this Crap. I’m only giving it 3 stars cause of that issue, but its a good, it does what I need it to do.

Running several Macs can get a bit hectic after a while so I started to research syncing folders. This in theory is a great concept. Download a new album by Eminem and save it in my music folder. Next my system automatically copies it over to my “backup” system in a replica folder just like my music folder. Easy right? Well I’ve decided to blog my experience at trying to do this. I’ve never attempted to do this before so this is a new adventure so to speak. Without further adeue, let’s get into it. I’ve created one folder on my desktop called BETA_ROOT_FOLDER and one on my server called BETA_BACKUP_FOLDER. I placed a few MP3’s into the root folder. After googling around for a bit, I tried finding a solution using AUTOMATOR, the built in app that comes installed with Mavericks, but moved on to something a little easier. I found Sync Folders Free. A free app I originally found on MacUpdate. I’ve linked directly to the developers site in case you were interested in the Pro Version as well. Installed it and was given a simple looking menu. I named my task name Beta Folder Sync Process, clicked on Folder A and selected my _BETA_ROOT_FOLDER folder. clicked on Folder B and selected _BETA_BACKUP_FOLDER. I left Sync move to A<+>B. Didn’t really tweak much else. Clicked on Synch Current Task. After a few seconds it was done. The folders automatically synced! I did one test with 4 mp3 files. Absolutely successful. I then did another test with 3 movie files. MP4, much larger then the mp3 files. Successful as well. I then deleted one of the synced movies in order to see what happens if files already exist in the target directory. Again, successful. So far so good. As a one time function this seems rather powerful and simple to operate. However, planning on using this to keep backups of my movie and mp3 files, it seems that this version of Sync Folders does not support storing a “task” as they are called. I looked at the Pro version and it appears that it is a more robust version of the free one. For only $7.99 it seems like a very good deal if it does what is promises. Before I purchase the PRO version, I am going to attempt to sync 2 mp3 folders. They are rather large so I’m interested to see how it handles large sync’s. I selected my two directories, double checked all the settings and clicked Sync Current Task. It immediately started reading the first folder and started counting all 182 thousand mp3’s that I have. In literally what seemed like 15 seconds, it was done analyzing it and began syncing the folders. It indicated that there were 1118 files that needed to be synced and began to transfer files. Fortunately I’m running external drives with USB 3.0 so the transfers are pretty decent. I’m not techy enough to tell you the transfer rate and all that, but it copied the entirety of those files in under 4 minutes. Now to check the folders to see if they are in fact the same size…. Folder A = 356.82 GB, Folder B = 356.3 GB. So somewhere along the way .52 GB went missing. After looking through them both, the sync created 2 extra folders. _DelSyncFiles on each folder. I am going to delete both of them and see what happens. I’m assuming that it took duplicates, or extra files and put them in the _DelSyncFiles folder in each folder. Immediately after doing that, both folders equaled 356.3 GB. Sync Success!! From what I see, this will do exactly what I want it to do, for the most part. What it looks like it won’t do is automatic backups say every Sunday night at midnight. I believe the PRO version does have timed backups, but more reading must ensue. Awesome. In the first paragraph of the PRO version it indicates that you can do Real Time Sync, Schedule or Manually do a sync. VERDICT: For most Mac users, the free version seems to be well worth the download. I am buying the PRO version simply so I can set it and forget it. That way I can have backups of my backups.

This one does it all without a lot of fussing with settings and repeating the same setup definitions each time you want to do something. Task list for quick selection and execution of manual syncs… very helpful for external drives that travel about a lot in between “docking”. The interface is easy enough to understand. And, the types of tasks which are predefined are comprehensive enough to accomplish any type of file/folder sync. Took me a tic to find how to terminate the app. But, once I saw the new menu bar icon, I realized it is an efficient use since the app is also a background service which can “watch” and “sync” in the background, I assume this works… But, I haven’t tested that part yet. I did test it on a network mountable disk. And, it worked perfectly with that task as well. Don’t get fooled by that “other” sync app that calls itself “Pro”… You will regret not spending the extra bucks to get one that actually HAS Pro features.

SELECT buttons to choose folders do not work for me. Had to drag and drop. It took a while because the plus sign wasnt showing up when I hovered during the drag and drop.

Serisously i had 2 basically identical drives minus a few changed files, this POS app deleted 2TB worth of data from one and procedded to start copying that same data back to it… Took 24 hours to re transfer the data and I missed a deadline because of it.

I am a photographer using a MacBook Air. I store my original master DNG files on a portable external hard drive, and my Lightroom catalog on my computer’s SSD drive. My wife, also on a Mac notebook, stores our family snapshots in an iPhoto database on a separate external hard drive. I’ve set up three tasks, one that makes an incremental backup of my wife’s iPhoto library to a folder on my Lightroom external HD, one that makes an incremental backup of my Lightroom HD to a folder on my wife’s external drive, and one that backs up my Lightroom catalog folder on my computer to my wife’s HD. Hook the two drives up to my computer, click one button and everything synchronizes… and both my wife and I have up-to-date access to all of our pictures. This app is _powerful_ so read the help webpage carefully. The interface could help you more in understanding the coding symbols, so pay attention. The drag and drop functionality to fill in file path names sometimes stops working for no apparent reason, but does not affect the the working of the app. When you drag a file onto the input/output fields, you are told it is advisable to save a com.greenworldsoft.syncfolderspro file. Nowhere is it explained in the documentation what this file does, or where it ought to be saved. In fact, saving it seems to do nothing at all, as the file does not appear in the finder location you target. It does not appear that either saving or canceling at this point makes any difference to the proper functioning of the app. Aside from these niggling things, this app is exactly what I was looking for.

Destroyed a directory of code files. Avoid this nightmare and stick with Rsync.

Looks like it can be a bit on the technical side but the help documents are of use. Just make sure to implement the backup when deletiing so if you map the wrong pairs you can restore the files. It is a fast utility though. I have terabytes of files and it handles them quickly.

Is there a reason this application will not sync Thunderbolt drives that are connected via Thunderbolt or USB? Am I missing something. Otherwise it is fantastic and very helpful.

This app holds promise, but there are issues. First, there is only a possiblilty to add one task because the add button advertised is no longer available. The add button does appear sometimes or at least in some functional modes. Second, it is not obvious how to get server folders to remount. It might be automatic, but I can’t tell. It says at the bottom ‘Check the availability of folders’, but that is not a button. It appears that the ability to mount a drive failes, even if that drive is present on the network and security is properly set (easily opened on point and click of server). The advertisement and their site says "Synchronize Macs across a network. Store login information for network folders so that they can be automatically mounted the next sync.” but there is no apparent place to set this — no place for password settings, etc. A message shows up when I try to use a server folder: "You cant enter the path to the folder manually.” Note that I dragged the folder onto the input area for the folder path, and alternatively used the ‘select’ button, and did not manually enter the path. It just does not work on a mac that is sharing a folder. The setting for [checkbox] Auto sync after every sec. ______ will clear the number of seconds entered every time, so you cannot really set a number of seconds. Real-time syncing does not seem to work in reality - there is some delay (a long time if at all for many file types?) after a change is made to one copy of the file. It does not support .html or .js files, or many other formats. The purchased app is called Sync Folders Pro, but there is a button at the bottom of the panel that says ‘PRO’ and it takes you to an advertisement for the PRO version. I cannot tell why it is there, but it also resets the settings when it is used. There is also a tab called ‘Pro Settings’. It is not obvious if the button at the bottom is at all related to the tab. The tab for Pro Settings does raise a proper dialog. It does not have any settings regarding opening of server folders. The log times for copies were 23 hours off, showing a time that is 23 hours ago for each sync attempt. This seems to fix itself after some usage. Finally, the language used is not exactly english, but is close. Improvements could be made in the completeness of the documentation but good attempts are made to have help buttons on features.

I’ve been using this app for at least two months, and it has been trustworthy the entire time. I use this to duplicate my main iCloud Drive to my OneDrive and Dropbox storage. This way I have redundancy without needing to keep track of everything that I’ve modified and manually sync it. It has been super reliable, and I’ve not had to mess with it again since I’ve set it up with a daily schedule…definitely the app that I was looking for! I highly recommend it!

Purchased this because it seemed more robust than oneway sync, which I’ve used for years. What a mistake. The program and its settings seems robust enough and, once you can get it to work, it works well. Unfortunately, every time you select a drive — and I mean EVERY time — it asks you to save a gremlin file inside your drive (for your protection, presumably) and locks your Mac up for several minutes. That means, every time you try to assign two folders, you have to wait approximately six minutes for the program to go through this select, freeze, cancel routine before it can execute the sync task. Renders the entire program worthless, in my view. Delete.