Hey friends,

lately I'm working on more demanding file operation in studios, so I concluded I need a dedicated piece of software to handle sync'ing and mirroring of folders and files between various Macs, external drives, network drives etc...

so far, surprisingly I was able to find only one open-source app which works fairly well, called FreeFileSync
https://freefilesync.org/



any thoughts and experiences on that one, if it's reliable and fast enough,
or is there anything else I might take a look at?
optionally, is there a paid app which would be significantly better perhaps?

cheers

 

I've been using the venerable 'rsync' for ages. If I wanted a break from 'rsync', I'd try 'rclone' first.

 

I use this free filesync for 2 years now and I've no complaints about it, straight forward and easy to use. If you dig it a bit, you have plenty backups/copy possibilities, batch processing etc. Their tutorials are also super good! And its lightning fast, at least for my use...

 

I have used Free File Sync for years, too, and I just donated a small amount ($5 I think).
I expect to donate yearly, at least, and more in the future as my finances should improve.
It is one of the few programs i pay for.

It has few complaints from me, and some awesome aspects.
I do not do my mirroring all at once, but frequently.
I compare using FFS and manually fix any renaming or organizing I may have done if it involves large files.
I have also used it extensively to cull / manage preset folders, compare installed folders on similar OS, find missing stuff...
You can select what to do if there are differences, and also manually 'filter' what you see and select to copy to another place, etc.
It is a nice duplicate finder in that way, too.

 

FreeFileSync is working perfectly. I'm using it for weekly backup, it's simple, flexible and fast.

 

Freefilesync is very efficient, but am experiencing a few issues, especially when dealing with different file systems (APFS vs ZFS for example), when case and special character sometimes will clash or create dupes. And a bit of weird errors when syncing towards cloud based folders.

Been using Resilio Sync for ages, but it's computer based sync, so you cannot sync two folders within the same machine (though you can by creating several user accounts on the computer).