How to open the sync.ffs_db file?

[cyaneon]

Hi there,

First time posting here. I've recently installed FFS so please forgive me ahead of time for this potentially nooby question.

I want to synchronise files between two drives, say Drive A and Drive B, by file content for various reasons (as opposed to the default time/size setting).

Where a file of the same name and in the same location exists on both Drive A and Drive B, and each one has been individually modified in terms of their content (as opposed to changes just being made on one side), under the "Action" icon, the software correctly shows "Both files have been changed since the last synchronisation."

I see that sync.ffs_db is created in both drives (as I have view hidden files enabled in Windows explorer) that I understand is meant to track such changes and are not identical both sides as they're specific to the drive they are created in.

My questions are:
a) how can I go about opening the sync.ffs_db file to see what information is in it (I've tried notepad, excel and sqlite) to no avail. The reasons I wish to access it are:
1) to find out when exactly the drive was last synchronised and with what other drive
2) what specific modifications to which files were made.
(Note I understand log files are created in the AppData folder, but these don't state which drives have been synced and what specific modifications have been made).

This sounds pedantic but its to create an audit trail for a project I'm doing. I understand versioning can do this to some extent, but ideally I'd like a trail of the metadata.

b) are any changes made to the drives in question actively tracked in real time by this file? (I ask because copying and pasting the same file to a different location in the drive on both sides is still detected by the software upon comparing them again). Or is the checksum of the file tracked by the file every time a comparison is run?

I've tried to read the documentation and search the forums before posting this but couldn't find the answers. Would be really grateful if anyone might be able to help. Thanks.

[Plerry]

a) The *.ffs_df files are binary files created by, and understood (only) by FFS.
The file-structure is not officially documented or supported for use by anything other than FFS.
However, the FFS code is open source, so if you (really) want to, you could extract the file structure from there, and use that to write your own code to use the file-content.

b) See here and further