SyncDroid

While using any file synchronizer, you may encounter conflicts. A conflict occurs when two copies of a file are changed at the same time. Since the synchronizer doesn’t know which change is the correct one, it has to ask you for assistance.

It’s possible that neither change is correct - if you change the same file in different ways, you may want to keep both changes. Say you’ve got a shopping list on your laptop and desktop. It starts out like so:

While you’re out-and-about with your laptop, you remember that your annoying Great Aunt Gladice is coming to visit tomorrow and you’d prefer that she go home early. So you decide to ’spice up’ her meal a little bit:

Then, while you’re at home, you remember that your kid’s birthday is coming up:

When it comes time to synchronize this, you end up with:

Neither the desktop nor the laptop have the correct list. SyncDroid will detect that the list has changed on both computers and ask you to help resolve the issue.

Your choices are:

• Do nothing. The files will be left alone. You’ll be able to fix the problem later.
• Don’t try to sync this file in the future. Sometimes, you just don’t need a file to be synchronized. If you’d prefer not to be bothered about this file again, choose this option.
• Use the file on <name>. If one of the computers or disks has the correct version of the file, choose it here. (largeman and kaysen are just two of my computers - yours will have different names).

If you’re in the situation above where neither side is correct, you’ll need to correct the problem yourself. If you hit the ‘Preview’ buttons next to each computer, you can see both files at the same time and match them up yourself.

We’re going to set up a system to back up your laptop or desktop to an external USB hard drive. It’ll run the backups automatically and you’ll be able to restore files from any point in the past.

I’m setting this up on Linux, but remember that you can use Windows or OSX if you like.

Download and install SyncDroid from here.

When you start it up, SyncDroid will ask you what you’d like to sync against. Click ‘An external hard drive or USB stick’.

SyncDroid will ask you which disk and provide some suggestions. I’m going to use a 160GB USB hard drive. You can use anything that you have available. Remember that the more space the external drive has, the more choices you have when you want to restore files from the past.

SyncDroid will ask you which files you’d like to sync to the drive. I’m just going to keep my home directory.

That’s it! SyncDroid will start the backup immediately. It’ll try to be polite, so you can keep working on your computer while it’s going. And anytime you change a file on your computer, it’ll automatically back it up.