File time changes due to daylight savings

Discuss new features and functions
Posts: 12
Joined: 11 Apr 2007

collinro

Firstly thanks Zenju for your great answer on subfolder synchronisation. I do have one more question. A lot of my files have a one hour difference due to daylight savings even though they are identical. I know that some synchronisation software can ignore this 1 hour difference when looking at what folders/files to synchronise. Are you able to do this in FreeFileSync?

Thanks again for making such great software.

Roger
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Posts: 7058
Joined: 9 Dec 2007

Zenju

Firstly thanks Zenju for your great answer on subfolder synchronisation. I do have one more question. A lot of my files have a one hour difference due to daylight savings even though they are identical. I know that some synchronisation software can ignore this 1 hour difference when looking at what folders/files to synchronise. Are you able to do this in FreeFileSync?

Thanks again for making such great software.

Rogercollinro
Hi Roger!

You can go to "Menu->Global settings" and set "file time tolerance" to 3602 (2 seconds if you sync to/from a FAT32 drive, if not, 3600 is sufficient).

However for the next release I plan to include a checkbox "ignore +-1h" for convenience to treat this special case.

Best regards, Zenju
Posts: 27
Joined: 31 Jan 2010

jonrichco

This sounds to be exactly what I need. I see you have implemented your ignore
+-1h in 3.6 (though it is in Advanced Global settings, not in Menu). However,
I often change countries and time zones, and I have found changes in some file
date stamps by 13 hours - I guess the only thing you can do in that situation
is to compare contents? However, that is actually no quicker than copying the
whole drive contents to your backup, so not much benefit.

Only one suggestion, that you put a reference to the 1 hour issue on the main
GUI - it has taken me 3 months to find it!

The program is great - seems much better than SyncToy.
Posts: 27
Joined: 31 Jan 2010

jonrichco

Regrettably cannot edit the above. I see there is a good summary in Help.
Advanced Compare by filesize seems to be the answer to my issue above. I
opened <UsernameAppData\Roaming\FreeFileSync\LastRun.ffs_guii> using Notepad
and can set <FileTimeTolerance>2</FileTimeTolerance> to say 60000. I would
imagine this would be OK for 99.99% of files, and I can accept the VERY small
changes in the remaining 0.01% in a backup that I will hopefully never have to
use.

Maybe this could also be added to Advanced Global settings to make it easier
for users to apply. I will only be applying it if there are large numbers of
files with time stamp differences >1hour.
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Posts: 7058
Joined: 9 Dec 2007

Zenju

This FAT time saving issue is a real nuisance. The following feature request
has the potential to solve the DST issue as well as changes in time zones:

[404, Invalid URL: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2994784&group_id=234430&atid=1093083]

But the drawback is it works only for <automatic> mode and entails
considerable code adaptions. It's still in discussion, maybe it will lead to a
hopefullyl complete solution for a future release. So my aim is to get rid of
this issue (if possible) from GUI compeletely.

Anonymous

=========================

PLEASE ADD FEATURE - "ignore if EXACTLY ONE HOUR difference."

==========================

TODAY again daylight savings happened in europe ...

PLEASE ADD FEATURE - ignore if EXACTLY ONE HOUR difference.

(now freeware) COPYTO has this feature (in Properties, bottom-most checkbox,
also check default to keep that setting)