Synk vs GoodSync vs Syncovery vs Chronosync. Comparison between syncing programs.

As mentioned in a prior blog, backing up is very important to us.  Over the years we've been tracking a handful of  NON-cloud Mac Syncing programs and have listed their positives and negatives for each program.  We will not go through each individual features, but will focus primary on the syncing speed and the ability for it to sync across all computers (more then two) quickly.  Block level syncing has also become important to us and that was actually why we have decided to try other syncing programs outside of Synk, which was our preferred syncing program for the last few years.  Block level syncing only syncs the portion of the file that changed rather then re-copying the whole file back over after a change.


Synk
Good:

• N-way sync, it'll sync to more then two computers at the same time.
• Any changes are almost immediately synced across all computers,
• Takes just 3 seconds to copy an newly created untitled folder across all computers

Bad:

• No block level syncing.
• If you change a large file, the whole file get copied over again
• Also if you rename a file, the whole file or folder gets copied over then the only one gets deleted
• Occasionally, it appears that a file will get delete thus causing a conflict in which I have to tell it what to do.  It appears that it'll delete a large file (15mb) then copy the new file over.  It will seem that it should copy the new file over first, then remove the old file, but instead remove the old file then copy the new one over (what happens if the laptops looses network connection? which appears to have happened right after it deleted a file and then it lost connection) I have written the company about this bug.

GoodSync:
Good:

• block level synk
• when you modify a large file, just he parts that changed get copied over
• when you rename a file, it actually renames it on remote computers
• When file changes it starts scanning almost immediately.

Bad:

• If you have more then one job, it will run each job sequentially.  That means if you have a large scan on job 1, then it'll take forever to get to job 5.  that can make for file conflicts.
• once it is set to automatically analyze, there is not way to stop it except force quite it.
• takes up to a minute to simply copy an untitled folder (it must go thru a whole scan first, so the more files the longer)
• no N-way sync, only can sync to two computer at a time, if you want to sync more then two, then you'll need to set up individual jobs for each computer

Syncovery:
Good:

• block level sync
• A lot of features!, but can become very confusing to the average user
• When file changes it copies right away

Bad:

• Uses standard afp which requires you to mount the afp volume.  If it gets disconnected you'll be prompted with apple disconnected message (which can be annoying) especially if you have multiple volumes to sync.
• Along the same line, syncovery does not use a specialized communication protocol to prevent permissions problem like Synk, GoodSync, and Chronosync.  It has a listeners on the serving computers that listens for requests from Syncovery to do stuff for it, i.e. instead of Syncovery scanning the remote computer, it'll send a request to the remote computer (known as Syncovery Remote Service) to scan the directories in it's place, then pass the info back to Syncovery to perform the needed task.
• Doesn't copy all the files like it should.  I did various renaming of files and it missed one file and no matter how many times I 'scanned' it, it never picked it up.
• No n-way sync.

Chronosync

Good:

• A lot of features.
• Uses a communication protocal known as chronos Agent to help with permissions

Bad:

• does know not know when to start scanning/copying when  file changes, relies on setting a timer to start syncing again and again.
• no block level sync.
• initial sync seems to take a long time perhaps it's because it's only 32-bit?

Bottom Line:  Even though Goodsync has block level syncing, a 15mb file with just a minor change will take about 5 seconds to sync up, but it has to go thru a whole directly scan before it'll do the update. What this means is that the total time it takes to start up, scan, then start syncing can take awhile, depending on the size of your scan.  In my case, it seemed like over 5 mins to do a complete sync.  And since this is not N-way, it take another additional 5 mins to scan add'l directories(if you want to sync the same folder across more then 2 computers) or sync jobs, for total of 15mins?  Syncovery appears to allow parallel syncing of jobs, but we were quickly turned off by it seemly not copying all the files like it should.  This is a big no-no, because of this, our eval of it was almost not worth it, so we stopped looking further.

Synk on the other hand would recopy the whole 15mb file, but it does not need to do a complete scan of all your directories first.  It appears to know immediately that a file has changed and then immediately start copying the new files over to the other computers.  So copying a single 15mb file took about a minute to complete.  Lets not forget Synk has N-way syncing, so if you have 3 computers all 3 are updated at the nearly same time, so all three can be synced up on about 1 min.  No sequential jobs to worry about.

So maybe we're a bit biased with using Synk to begin with, but we're still going to stay with Synk.  I really wish the guys as Decimus will update Synk with block level syncing and smarter renaming of file and folders, and we're concerned about the future of the app because the founder of the company left and appears to be working at Google now.


Mikegyver.com

Gone overboard backing up Data.

Hello,

Over the Christmas and New Year's, I struck up a conversation with a few people (on separate occasions) regarding backing up their data and syncing data across computers.

I'm actually surprised that a not whole lot of people back up their data (or a weak way of backing up), especially since we have pretty much gone totally digital in way of documents, music, ibooks, and especially pictures & videos

To some, this may seem overkill, but here's what we have setup.

I have a MacPro server that is in charge of backing and syncing everything across our network.

First we have time machine running backing up to a Drobo.  So far, I've experienced 2 hard drives that failed on me, but due to nature of Drobo, I just replaced the drive and did not experience any down time at all.  I highly recommend this drive!

Second, I have gone through numerous syncing utilities (Apple's home sync, goodsync, cronosync, synchronize Pro, and more I can't remember)  I have also tried the online type backup and currently use things like dropbox, and bitcasa, but they don't really allow the full syncing of your whole home folder and they are really meant for sharing with friends. I have finally settled with Synk by decimus.  This is the only program that I could find that allows you to sync the whole hard drive live.  The idea is that I have 3 laptops on my network.  I want the ability pick up any of my laptops and have everything with me.  I also have synk running to an offsite online NAS drive locked up in a fireproof safe so that my data is not in the same place as the office, but still on the same property.

Finally, for further insurance, we use an online unlimited backup called CrashPlan.  I've used others such as Carbonite, but it took 3 years to back up my whole hard drive whereas Crashplan did it in 3 months!  Crashplan also has a bunch of nice options such as throttling your bandwidth during use, etc.  All for cheaper then Carbonite (depending on the plan you purchase).  I've looked at other online backup plans such as SugarSync, dropbox, but it seems that it's difficult to find unlimited backup.  Bitcasa looks promising, but I still question how it'll work in the real life.

How about you?  Are you as crazy as me?  Any other backup plans that you use that are better then what we are using?  Let me know!

Mikegyver.com