Hi,
I just have a few simple questions. If you answer them to my satisfaction, I will immediately donate €20 to the project.
--1. When syncing to a USB drive, is it preferred to have it as an NTFS volume? My stick is currently FAT32, but Volume Shadow Copy will definitely not work on that ...(?). It is no big deal to reformat it as NTFS. The stick will probably mostly be a backup unit (sync destination) but still, sometimes FAT32 is still mentioned as having benefits for smaller volumes..? My stick is only 2GB so the large file thing is not an issue.
--2. It doesn't seem like this software supports background syncing (folder monitoring). Am I correct in that? This is not all that troublesome for me, but I need to be able to initiate syncs with a single press of a button. I'm currently in Windows 7, which doesn't allow for program shortcuts on the taskbar. It does allow for ..nah I don't think the Start Menu is very suitable either...
----- * My requirement is very very simple: initiate syncs with a single button click and
------- receiving some feedback (for example, on the icon itself) that the sync has
------- been performed.
Given that the software can do everything else I can currently dream of, this is really my only requirement. This icon could be a system-tray icon. It would be preferably something background-y.
I haven't checked it out yet, but I prefer to spend €20 currently to get those answers, instead of my own time :).
I will also use it [the software] for larger backups (currently, ~600 GB to another disk) and hopefully I will also be able to use it to sync to a network share (Synology NAS).
Regards, Bart.
ps. to be clear again: I need to be able to perform simple, pre-configured syncs from outside of some main program window with nothing other than a little gadget somewhere even when the main window is closed (Windows 7 taskbar buttons of closed programs allow for custom actions in the popup menu) that would allow me to initiate this sync (many times over a day) with as much ease as you could possibly get. And there needs to be a bit of visual feedback. Or even a progress indication on the icon.
ps2. I just need to know how much of this is possible already, that is all.. :)
ps3. Markdown messes up my list formatting which is why I have done it like this.
Some questions (pre-sale :p)
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Donation for quick answers sounds fair :) and you even put it on the forums, so it might help others with similar questions, so even better.
> When syncing to a USB drive, is it preferred to have it as an NTFS volume?
In general it doesn't matter. However FAT is subject to daylight saving time shifts twice a year (e.g. see FFS help file on this subject, you can ignore +-1h shifts to mitigate this drawback) and FAT also does not fully support detection of moved files, in case you care about this kind of perf optimization.
Yes, VSS won't work on FAT, but generally you wouldn't need it there anyway: FFS applies VSS only for locked files and it's unlikely you'll have those on your backup stick.
> It doesn't seem like this software supports background syncing (folder monitoring)
It does in fact, but this monitoring aspect is delegated to a helper tool called RealtimeSync, also available with the FFS package. So RealtimeSync is setup for monitoring specific folders, and calls a FFS batch script when it detects changes. The idea is to keep the FFS user interface clean, while still handling this "advanced scenario".
> initiate syncs with a single press of a button
You can do this easily: Just create a .ffs_batch job in FFS and double click it. You can also attach this to your Windows 7 task bar. Then start by right-clicking on the task bar icon and select the .ffs_batch file. Now that's two clicks, but you can do it with one, too; right-click the task bar icon, go to properties and add the path to the .ffs_batch file as command line argument to the FFS .exe.
> receiving some feedback
If you've created a .ffs_batch job with default options, you'll see a progress dialog during sync. In the .ffs_batch job creation dialog you can also select "run minimized". Then you won't see the dialog, but still a little progress indicator in the Windows system tray. In case you change your mind and want details, just double-click the systray icon and you'll get the dialog again. Or press the "minimize to systray" button in the dialog, and your back in the tray.
> When syncing to a USB drive, is it preferred to have it as an NTFS volume?
In general it doesn't matter. However FAT is subject to daylight saving time shifts twice a year (e.g. see FFS help file on this subject, you can ignore +-1h shifts to mitigate this drawback) and FAT also does not fully support detection of moved files, in case you care about this kind of perf optimization.
Yes, VSS won't work on FAT, but generally you wouldn't need it there anyway: FFS applies VSS only for locked files and it's unlikely you'll have those on your backup stick.
> It doesn't seem like this software supports background syncing (folder monitoring)
It does in fact, but this monitoring aspect is delegated to a helper tool called RealtimeSync, also available with the FFS package. So RealtimeSync is setup for monitoring specific folders, and calls a FFS batch script when it detects changes. The idea is to keep the FFS user interface clean, while still handling this "advanced scenario".
> initiate syncs with a single press of a button
You can do this easily: Just create a .ffs_batch job in FFS and double click it. You can also attach this to your Windows 7 task bar. Then start by right-clicking on the task bar icon and select the .ffs_batch file. Now that's two clicks, but you can do it with one, too; right-click the task bar icon, go to properties and add the path to the .ffs_batch file as command line argument to the FFS .exe.
> receiving some feedback
If you've created a .ffs_batch job with default options, you'll see a progress dialog during sync. In the .ffs_batch job creation dialog you can also select "run minimized". Then you won't see the dialog, but still a little progress indicator in the Windows system tray. In case you change your mind and want details, just double-click the systray icon and you'll get the dialog again. Or press the "minimize to systray" button in the dialog, and your back in the tray.
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Perfect. I will check everything out right away. Money is transferred.
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Alright, my experience thus far:
..- creating a 'minimized' batch job and then executing it doesn't provide for ANY visual feedback. I did see an icon flashing, I believe, but since my job took less than a second to execute, I never saw anything useful.
..- making it non-minimized gives a pleasantly-sized dialog window with some feedback/reporting, which is fine.
..- I don't think the feedback in that window is very useful for this task. It only shows two graphs and very scarce statistics. And the text "Completed" (probably, in English). That is fine, but compared to some of the other windows in the main program, it is very poor.
..- I would prefer a very simple, semantic addition to this "Completed" text...:
..a. If no files were copied, then say so. "No files needed synchronisation. Nothing was copied."
..b. If files were copied/overwritten in one direction, then say so. "n files needed synchronisation. m files were copied to <the right>, overwriting mm. No files were updated on <the left>. p files were deleted on <the right>."
Reasoning: when a user initiates a batch job, he/she probably has a good idea of what kind of changes he/she has made since the last run. Then, he/she just wants to know if the sync executes correctly. Giving this kind of information would in most cases be sufficient to give a feeling of "alright, it is safe, my data is secure."
..- The log window (as part of that dialog) is pretty much useless to get a quick overview of what has happened.
Why? A line like ""D:\backup\strange\images\crazy\trees\large-ones\oddness.txt" is being created." is too long for that window to provide access to the "is being created" text. Furthermore, "is created" does not provide any cues as to what actually happened. We have to deduct that it was created on the target volume, which goes unnamed \[\[or actually, in this case it was the source volume. I couldn't tell from the language. Also, this is the Dutch translation I am speaking of. "Creating XXX" would be different of course...\]\]. A proper text would be something like:
"oddness.txt was copied to K:\"
"oddness.txt was updated on K:\"
"oddness.txt was updated on D:\backup\strange\"
"oddness.txt was deleted from K:\"
And so on. This is the stuff people want to know. If you do some full backup of a large number of files, it is not a problem to analyse logs and check what exactly took place. But if you are doing small syncs, you want a bit of quick assurance that everything went as intended. If someone is indeed doing a larger sync and wants more information (actual file paths on each volume) he would need a bigger window ANYway to see that info!! So with the current window size (which is excellent) you need smaller texts. There is no room to include file paths. Of individual files and individual destinations.
Anyway, that would be my suggestion.
..- creating a 'minimized' batch job and then executing it doesn't provide for ANY visual feedback. I did see an icon flashing, I believe, but since my job took less than a second to execute, I never saw anything useful.
..- making it non-minimized gives a pleasantly-sized dialog window with some feedback/reporting, which is fine.
..- I don't think the feedback in that window is very useful for this task. It only shows two graphs and very scarce statistics. And the text "Completed" (probably, in English). That is fine, but compared to some of the other windows in the main program, it is very poor.
..- I would prefer a very simple, semantic addition to this "Completed" text...:
..a. If no files were copied, then say so. "No files needed synchronisation. Nothing was copied."
..b. If files were copied/overwritten in one direction, then say so. "n files needed synchronisation. m files were copied to <the right>, overwriting mm. No files were updated on <the left>. p files were deleted on <the right>."
Reasoning: when a user initiates a batch job, he/she probably has a good idea of what kind of changes he/she has made since the last run. Then, he/she just wants to know if the sync executes correctly. Giving this kind of information would in most cases be sufficient to give a feeling of "alright, it is safe, my data is secure."
..- The log window (as part of that dialog) is pretty much useless to get a quick overview of what has happened.
Why? A line like ""D:\backup\strange\images\crazy\trees\large-ones\oddness.txt" is being created." is too long for that window to provide access to the "is being created" text. Furthermore, "is created" does not provide any cues as to what actually happened. We have to deduct that it was created on the target volume, which goes unnamed \[\[or actually, in this case it was the source volume. I couldn't tell from the language. Also, this is the Dutch translation I am speaking of. "Creating XXX" would be different of course...\]\]. A proper text would be something like:
"oddness.txt was copied to K:\"
"oddness.txt was updated on K:\"
"oddness.txt was updated on D:\backup\strange\"
"oddness.txt was deleted from K:\"
And so on. This is the stuff people want to know. If you do some full backup of a large number of files, it is not a problem to analyse logs and check what exactly took place. But if you are doing small syncs, you want a bit of quick assurance that everything went as intended. If someone is indeed doing a larger sync and wants more information (actual file paths on each volume) he would need a bigger window ANYway to see that info!! So with the current window size (which is excellent) you need smaller texts. There is no room to include file paths. Of individual files and individual destinations.
Anyway, that would be my suggestion.
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Hey, I'm sorry, I went on a bit too long filling in all kinds of details that should be left to the actual programmer/author/creator to decide upon :).
I edited my post and took out the bits that are not important. Please take what remains as an indication of what *might* be a useful thing to consider, i.e. a "results" report that is on par with the quality of the pre-sync information a user gets.
Regards, Bart.
ps. I did my first complete ~450 GB backup yesterday. It was interesting to see that the resource monitor of Windows 7 attributed a 18 MB/s disc activity to FFS (I believe it was the reading) while a matched 18 MB/s was attributed to "System" (this was for writing). (Talking USB2.0). It also seemed as if FFS spawned a lot of threads all dealing with different, individual files simultaneously. That's probably not a problem for USB (since that is the bottleneck) but it would seem like something like that would sit in the way of proper sequential writes? At least the resource monitor showed a lot of different threads or file activity on that disk/those disks and it showed the write/read speed for each file. That is something that doesn't really alarm me but it does make me wonder...?
Regards, Bart.
I edited my post and took out the bits that are not important. Please take what remains as an indication of what *might* be a useful thing to consider, i.e. a "results" report that is on par with the quality of the pre-sync information a user gets.
Regards, Bart.
ps. I did my first complete ~450 GB backup yesterday. It was interesting to see that the resource monitor of Windows 7 attributed a 18 MB/s disc activity to FFS (I believe it was the reading) while a matched 18 MB/s was attributed to "System" (this was for writing). (Talking USB2.0). It also seemed as if FFS spawned a lot of threads all dealing with different, individual files simultaneously. That's probably not a problem for USB (since that is the bottleneck) but it would seem like something like that would sit in the way of proper sequential writes? At least the resource monitor showed a lot of different threads or file activity on that disk/those disks and it showed the write/read speed for each file. That is something that doesn't really alarm me but it does make me wonder...?
Regards, Bart.
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> a. If no files were copied, then say so.
> b. If files were copied/overwritten in one direction, then say so
The results dialog already shows how many items had been processed during sync. But the visually most prominent GUI element, the graphs, still show a fraction of progress. I'll fix this to show no graph at all if there's "nothing to sync". This should be enough to notify about this special completion condition.
> "oddness.txt was copied to K:\"
> "oddness.txt was updated on K:\"
> "oddness.txt was updated on D:\backup\strange\"
> "oddness.txt was deleted from K:\"
What's the difference to the current text "Overwriting file K:\oddness.txt"?
> I edited my post and took out the bits that are not important.
Thank you! :D
> That is something that doesn't really alarm me but it does make me wonder...?
Not sure what you've been measuring, but it probably wasn't FFS ;)
> b. If files were copied/overwritten in one direction, then say so
The results dialog already shows how many items had been processed during sync. But the visually most prominent GUI element, the graphs, still show a fraction of progress. I'll fix this to show no graph at all if there's "nothing to sync". This should be enough to notify about this special completion condition.
> "oddness.txt was copied to K:\"
> "oddness.txt was updated on K:\"
> "oddness.txt was updated on D:\backup\strange\"
> "oddness.txt was deleted from K:\"
What's the difference to the current text "Overwriting file K:\oddness.txt"?
> I edited my post and took out the bits that are not important.
Thank you! :D
> That is something that doesn't really alarm me but it does make me wonder...?
Not sure what you've been measuring, but it probably wasn't FFS ;)
