ChronoSync

[Pyrotechnic]

I now have an iMac and also a MacBook. I want to synchronise my home folder in both directions and ChronoSync claims to do this.

Can anyone offer any comments on this piece of software and if it works as well as it is claimed.

I will also be carrying out this via the firewire option, however, I am not sure if I need a specific cable as the connections I have on my 1 week old MBP look different than what I have seen firewire to look like.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

I now have an iMac and also a MacBook. I want to synchronise my home folder in both directions and ChronoSync claims to do this.

Can anyone offer any comments on this piece of software and if it works as well as it is claimed.

I will also be carrying out this via the firewire option, however, I am not sure if I need a specific cable as the connections I have on my 1 week old MBP look different than what I have seen firewire to look like.

Any advice would be appreciated.

I am using it almost a year now and I found it very reliable. I have not used it over Firewire, only Ethernet and WLAN. Ethernet is very fast.

The current version 4.0 is somewhat more difficult to configure than the previous.
I had to do some fiddling. Before it wanted to synchronize every file and folder depending on their access-time, even if nothing had changed in the file itself. It also notifies you about each and every change event occurring inside a folder, even if the whole hierarchy has updated. This can be annoying at times.

Be aware Email syncing only works in one direction (no merge).

 

[Pyrotechnic]

Thanks for the quick reply. Its mainly only for my documents. I have Mobile Me to cover the bookmarks etc. My MBP is set to keep the email on the server so it will end up on my iMac at home.

Looks like this will be fine for me. I have an ethernet cable so may purchase and give it a go.

Having just done some browsing, many people seem to say its difficult to set up.

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Thanks for the quick reply. Its mainly only for my documents. I have Mobile Me to cover the bookmarks etc. My MBP is set to keep the email on the server so it will end up on my iMac at home.

Looks like this will be fine for me. I have an ethernet cable so may purchase and give it a go.

Having just done some browsing, many people seem to say its difficult to set up.

Well, initial configuration is really quite easy and it comes with documentation.

You set up the two locations that you want to synchronize, choose a synch-direction (left,right,bidirectional). There are two checkboxes that let you sync file deletions and if you want to archive stuff that otherwise gets overwritten.

After this you click 'compare' and you can view and approve any potential changes. If you click 'synchronize' it does the real thing...

Afterwards you save your settings in a synchronisation document.

I found it useful to define quite a number of different synchronisation documents for 'Mail', 'Images', etc. to be run at different times. This makes synchronization faster and gives you a better overview what is currently updated.

The difficult bit starts when you may want to tweak it. The program has many options and things that you can configure and not all of them are completely obvious from the beginning. It requires some playing around. You can set up manual, time or event based syncing, etc. ...

Keep in mind that you usually do the tweaking only once. Anytime after it is really quite simple.

 

[Pyrotechnic]

Thank you.

I presume I now need a Firewire cable to make life easier and faster.

Looking at them I didnt realise there were so many. I think I need a 9 pin to 9 pin, is this correct.

Its connecting the latest iMac to a 1 week old MBP ?

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Thank you.

I presume I now need a Firewire cable to make life easier and faster.

Looking at them I didnt realise there were so many. I think I need a 9 pin to 9 pin, is this correct.

Its connecting the latest iMac to a 1 week old MBP ?

I doubt that you will see much speed improvement with Firewire.
Both Macs have Gigabit-Ethernet, so you can use some cheap Cat5e Ethernet cable.

For Firewire you would need a 9 pin Firewire 800 cable (never used it myself).