FREEFILESYNC WINDOWS 8 WINDOWS 8

If your briefcases had sync copies of several files form disparate locations on your hard drive, the transition to FFS may not go as smoothly. However, I generally created sync copies of entire directories, not individual files. In my experience so far, most of the differences have just been advantages or additional features of FreeFileSync.Īs a replacement for how I used briefcases, FreeFileSync hasn’t given me any major trouble. It also displays a graph with detailed information about sync progress, whereas a briefcase only gives you a progress bar. The program offers multiple sync options, like “mirror” and “update” in addition to the briefcase-like “two-way” sync. This can also be an advantage: You can open the program once and run several sync jobs in one session without having to browse to each briefcase in Windows Explorer.Īdditionally, FreeFileSync’s file list offers more information and more options for sync actions than a briefcase’s, and is easier to read.

FREEFILESYNC WINDOWS 8 WINDOWS 8

This doesn’t bother me, though, since the program is so much faster than briefcases on Windows 8 even with the extra clicks.

The first and most obvious is that FreeFileSync isn’t integrated into Windows Explorer like Briefcase is, so you have to open the program each time you use it. Then you click Synchronize, and FreeFileSync updates the files. The program compares them and shows you a list of which files have changed and what it plans to do to bring the two directories in sync, giving you the opportunity to change the action for each file. In a lot of ways, FreeFileSync works similarly to briefcases. The solution I decided on was an open-source (GPLv3) application called FreeFileSync. Between these problems and the looming threat of the workaround being disabled in future versions, it eventually became clear that I needed to try something else. Additionally, I’d often run into a bug that made the briefcase think that both versions of some huge number of files (sometimes every file in the briefcase) had been modified, forcing me to click through every single one of them and manually decide which version to keep. My experience has been that briefcases on Windows 8 don’t actually work all that well. My post from last December on getting briefcases to work on Windows 8 has gotten a lot of traffic, which makes me feel a little guilty.

Freefilesync windows 8