syncing a folder from my hard drive on to a portable hard drive

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syncing a folder from my hard drive on to a portable hard drive

Does anybody know the best way for me to be able to sync a folder from my Hard Drive with a folder on a portable external drive?

The set-up is this. I work on an iMac at work and then from a MacBook Pro at home. I want to take the folder containing my work home with me on the portable drive, and then be able to sync it back up once I have made any changes, so that I always have the same info on both drives.

What is the best way of doing this? Is this something that can be done with iSync or Automator? Do I need a third party software, if so what can you suggest?

I do also have iDisk, however the folder I want to keep syncing with me is over 60GB so too big for iDisk. I also want to use some software to sync, rather than me copying and pasting the whole folder each time, as that leads to errors and takes ages.

Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks 🙂

2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.1), Western Digital External Hard Drive 1TB

Posted on Nov 11, 2009 10:05 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 11, 2009 10:13 AM in response to Simon Judd

There are many file/folder synchronizing apps to be found at versiontracker.com or macupdate.com

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Answer 2

Nov 11, 2009 10:29 AM in response to Simon Judd

Take a look at Chronosync, it will not only do what you want, it will store a small sync file after you do the initial sync, so you can then do subsequent syncs with a double click on the Chronosync file, and it will be EXTREMELY fast as it compares the previous state with the current state and then only updates the files that have changed. It isn't free but is very cheap, and after you buy it you get the updates forever for free.

http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/cs/chrono_overview.html

I've been using it for years. I use it to backup my own data folders to other drives.
Francine

Francine
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