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Large-scale Mac-to-Mac Synchronization Solution?

D

DavisBAnimal

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 17, 2002
52
0
New Hampshire
I am soon to be a two-Mac man, once my Dual 2.0 GHz G5 arrives sometime on or before Oct. 30th, and joins my trusty TiBook 667 MHz. My question is this: One of the coolest new features coming with Panther, I think, it the new souped-up, and pimped-out iDisk (cool if you have .Mac). I really like the whole fast-access and synchronization features - as described on the Panther website:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/idisk.html

“Now you can access iDisk files at any time, even when you’re on the go and off-line. All iDisk files and folders are regularly and automatically synchronized with Apple servers when you have a network connection. All your latest changes are always accessible from anywhere....If you use multiple Macs, you’ll appreciate having the same up-to-date files available directly from the Finder on both of them. You can even add new files or make changes while you are off-line. The changes will be automatically synchronized back to Apple servers the next time you connect.”

I am now looking for ways to do similar things with my upcoming set-up. Once the G5 arrives on or before Oct. 30th, I plan on using that as the sort of mothership, where I will host all my files - from Final Cut Projects, to Final Draft Screenplays, to Camera Logs in Excel, Dreamweaver Pages etc. etc (I run my own Underground Digital Video Production studio - www.PapaSquidProductions.com). I’d then take the TiBook out on shoots with me, to keep the camera log, to write screenplays in the park, to design the website on the go, blah blah. I’d love to be able to keep all the files between the G5 and the TiBook constantly synchronized via Airport (both will have Airport cards installed), but given that there will be way more to keep synchronized than the 100 MB of iDisk space I get with .Mac, it seems like the only way I’d be able to do this is through manually copying back and forth. But that seems like a messy option - not knowing which file is the most current, forgetting to sync, on and on and on.

Does anyone know of any software that will allow me large-scale synchronization across two separate computers via Airport? I don’t want full carbon-copy drives across both, since I have 40 GBs available on the TiBook and 250 GBs on the G5, but some way I can set some folder on the G5 as the “sync” folder, and then anytime my TiBook comes within Airport range, the two computers sync-up automatically.

I'd think this would be a pretty cool OS feature. Until then, I'm happy to go with a reliable third party program.

Thanks guys, and I apologize for the extended post.

Davis

PS. By the way, that website was www.PapaSquidProductions.com

www.PapaSquidProductions.com
 
Looking to do the exact same thing... I thought there was an easy way to do this... anyone???

Bueller???
 
Definitely.. I *think* one of the members here (RobbieDuncan) had a site a few days ago with sync software on it. If he could make it regular/auto for you, it would be nice eh?
 
How about the freeware Synk?

http://www.decimus.net/synk/

Basically, you point it at two locations (for example, a shared folder on your G5 and one on your PB), then tell it to make what is in the two the same. It should update older files to newer ones, copy ones that only exist in one location, etc.

It should (at least in theory) also be able to automatically mount network files, so you can basically just run a synch operation any time you want to have the contents match, and it should do all the rest of the work for you.

I've been using it as a cheap-ass network backup program for well over a year now, and it was just recently adopted by a new programmer when the original guy abandoned it.

Only one thing I'd watch out for: make sure your short username is the same on both computers. I've had annoying issues synching files owned by a different user over the network causing the local copies to have read-only permissions, which causes subsequent synchs to fail, since the file can't be overwritten. Doing a "read and write" then "modify all" via a Finder get info window is a work around, but an unnecessary hassle that I don't think will happen so long as both users are the same.

There are many similar programs available for people who want to do exactly this (laptop synched to a desktop), but that's the most stable of the free ones I've used. Search VersionTracker for many other options, most of them paid.
 
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