Command Line Usage
FreeFileSync supports additional synchronization scenarios via a command line interface.
To get a syntax overview, open the console, go to the directory where FreeFileSync is installed and type:
FreeFileSync -h or FreeFileSync --help
1. Run a FreeFileSync batch job
In order to start synchronization in batch mode, supply the path of a ffs_batch configuration file as the first argument after
the FreeFileSync executable:
FreeFileSync "D:\Backup Projects.ffs_batch"
After synchronization one of the following status codes is returned:
Exit Codes
0 Synchronization completed successfully
1 Synchronization completed with warnings
2 Synchronization completed with errors
3 Synchronization was aborted
You can evaluate these codes from a script (e.g. a cmd or bat file on Windows)
and check if synchronization completed successfully:
"C:\Program Files\FreeFileSync\FreeFileSync.exe" "D:\Backup Projects.ffs_batch"
if not %errorlevel% == 0 (
::if return code is 1 or greater, something went wrong, add special treatment here
echo Errors occurred during synchronization...
pause & exit 1
)
Attention
If you are running the batch job unattended, make sure your script is not blocked showing a notification dialog. Consider the
following options when setting up the FreeFileSync batch job:
- Enable Auto-Close to skip the summary dialog after synchronization.
- Set up error handling to Ignore errors or Cancel to stop the synchronization at the first error.
2. Start a FreeFileSync GUI configuration
If you pass a ffs_gui file, FreeFileSync will start in GUI mode and immediately start comparison (but only if all directories exist):
FreeFileSync "D:\Manual Backup.ffs_gui"
3. Customize an existing configuration
You can replace the directories of a given ffs_gui or ffs_batch configuration file by using the
-DirPair parameter:
FreeFileSync "D:\Manual Backup.ffs_gui" -dirpair C:\NewSource D:\NewTarget
4. Merge multiple configurations
When more than one configuration file is provided, FreeFileSync will merge
everything into a single configuration with multiple folder pairs and start in GUI mode:
FreeFileSync "D:\Manual Backup.ffs_gui" "D:\Backup Projects.ffs_batch"
5. Use a different GlobalSettings.xml file
By default, FreeFileSync uses a single GlobalSettings.xml file containing options that apply to all synchronization tasks;
for examples see
Expert Settings.
If you want FreeFileSync to use a different settings file instead, just add the path via command line:
FreeFileSync "D:\Different GlobalSettings.xml"