I tried using xcopy and robocopy, but abandoned them when I discovered that they did not faithfully mirror the source to the target.
The aggregate target numbers and sizes regularly didn’t match up, and I am not referring to files that had names or paths that were too long (which no utility can handle), but to GBs of normal files of varying sizes.
I eventually went for SyncBack Free, which I verified mirrored properly.
Like I did with Outlook files, one could use a hard link to put the actual files on a data drive that is completely backed up.
It is a pity that Windows doesn’t have a generic facility to redirect like they do with the Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos folders, where you have the option to transfer all the files to the new location. I use that to map my dual boots to the same data drive. Do that with IE Favourites as well. While Outlook did have a facility to shift the data files around, it was so flakey and had to be done for each file that I just went to using a single hard link.
I had thought of doing a utility like that using hard links and data moves (even mapped out a lot of the logic and started learning C# rather than continue to use VB), but got distracted into other things that may actually earn a living!
If I remember correctly, MS Sync Toy was another that I found was dubious. Previous versions to 2.1 did have known issues.
Also, it has not been updated since that 2.1 in 2009.
We are using SyncBack Free to perform ad-hoc backups after we have been editing files, but we also use it on a supervisory PC we have to backup our main NAS box to another overnight.
Unfortunately, a couple of versions back, they dropped a facility where it could backup folders if the computer had been idle for a time, which typically meant that we didn’t have to think about those ad-hoc backups.
I’ve been using FreeFileSync for a whiile now and have been very satisfied with the results.
FreeFileSync is a folder comparison and synchronization tool providing highly optimized performance and usability without a needlessly complex user interface.
(It is also •Cross-platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)