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From somewhere outside myself, I watched in horror as my hand clicked “OK”—and deleted a rather large collection of disk images from my computer. After a futile attempt to recover the files, I figured it was finally time to implement my drunken New Years pledge to back up my personal files more regularly.
I started using FullSync, a free open-source Java-based application that can archive or synchronize data to external hard drives, networked Windows shares or even FTP repositories—the latter available through regular FTP or SFTP.
For each directory I needed to archive, I created a profile that defined the target location and transport method and allowed me to create simple customized inclusion or exclusion rules—to back up only Word documents, for instance.
Each profile can be scheduled to run at regular intervals, and I could mess with crontab for more specific scheduling options.
FullSync works well for archiving data to an external drive or network share, but it is not so good for syncing data between actively used machines.
The profiles offer several synchronization options, including a two-way sync of target and source.
However, FullSync does not effectively deal with files that have been changed on both sides since the last synchronization event, and it will keep only the newest file.
Installation packages for the Windows beta Version 0.9.1, released this month, are available at fullsync.sourceforge.net.
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