Backup/synchronisation software?

Well .mac will sync your bookmarks, contacts, calendars and (if you save them to your idisk), your documents, along with a bunch of other stuff.

You can configure it to sync automatically or on demand, i don't know if you could get it to trigger on insertion of a usb device.

It's not free though.

The NotMac guys are showing some promising work on a free (host it yourself) version.

Or were you looking for something that would use the USB disk for storage for the syncronisation? It might be possible to get something together to copy the files and whatnot, but i don't know of anything that does this at present.

 

Slingshot might be able to help: http://www.martian.com/SlingShot.html

 

Might want to give http://www.softobe.com/products/flsy/pp.html a look. I use it for backup but it will synchronize too.

 

Use .mac for everything other than your Documents folder, and then use something like SuperDuper or Chronosync for folders. SuperDuper synchs my Home folders on my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro and does a great job. I just exclude things that won't fit, like iTunes, Lightroom, movies, etc.

 

Is there a way to Sync one's user folders using .mac?

I have a MacBook Pro, and an iMac. I want to keep my user account on my MBP in complete sync with one account on my iMac.

I just signed up for .mac trial, and have been able to sync all my preferences and things. But I haven't figured out how to sync my Documents, Desktop, etc. ... basically the contents of my Home folder.

I'm worried about using .mac for all the preferences and things, and then also using CCC or ChronoSync, because wouldn't they then overwrite some of the things that .mac already synced?

BTW, .mac synced my email accounts, but it did NOT sync the mail folders "on my mac" that I use for filing away/organising my emails. As such, they're all in my inbox. Any way to keep those?

 

I don't think .Mac will do this, at least the way you want it done. It doesn't directly sync 2 folders on 2 different computers. You can configure iDisk to be your Documents folder, and it will sync between the 2 computers, but there are obvious downsides to that, especially if you work offline a lot.

You can easily do this with programs, however. I sync my user folders on my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro with SuperDuper. Works great. There is also a program out there called Synchronize Plus that really works great if you just want to sync 2 folders across machines. It will auto-mount the second machine's drive, run the sync, and then shut down. It has good conflict checking, you can set it up different ways, or even just handle the conflicts manually.

Neither program will (to my knowledge) combine separate databases, such as Mail.app.