It works…but not “out of the box"

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.

BiffSmedley about Sync Folders Pro