FolderShare

Every year or two I try out a different file synchronization program to see if it can offer anything that the collection of robocopy scripts I currently use for backup and synchronization can't. I have yet to find something that does exactly what I want with the simplicity and ease of use I expect, until now... After hearing about FolderShare in a discussion of offsite backups on the Windows Tech Off topic group, I decided to give it my semi-annual try.

I installed it on my laptop and my desktop, selected a directory to synchronize, and it just worked. It handled collisions the way I had hoped (by copying duplicate files and appending the name of the computer from which  they came), worked innocuously in the background whenever the computers were on the network, used secure transfer even between machines on a local network, and had a really intuitive web-based interface for viewing the status of the machines participating in the synchronization. What really won me over, however, was its seamless ability to synchronize across multiple machines simultaneously. I now have 4 machines on my home network all synchronizing on a directory containing photographs, and it works great. I can now download pictures from a camera onto any of these machines and know that they will propagate to all of the others with no effort on my part. There are a number of other features I haven't even tapped into, which look promising as well, including web access to files and exclusive sharing with invited guests.

I did run into a limitation of directories with > 10,000 file, but there was an implication in the error message that it would possible with the purchased version of the product (the product was actually purchased by Microsoft just 4 days ago, so it looks like the licensing scheme will change, and there is no way that I could see to purchase a license at this point).

If you're looking for a backup/sync mechanism, I recommend checking FolderShare out.