Everyone who donates is eligible to download a special
version of FreeFileSync without any advertisements,
including a few of bonus features.
It has a history of bundling file-droppers/malware; there's a donation edition with a different feature set, with some extra features (including removal of arbitrary limitations on the regular versions); the installers are binary blobs, and there's no attempt (and passive hostility) towards integration with distros and package managers; source control isn't provided, and there's basically no attempt to create a dev community.
The binary installers may or may not include things that are not in the provided source code, like installer and ad systems. That's not really cool.
SyncThing seems like a safer bet (better community, proper OSS, etc). :)
For those mentioning WSL enabling using rsync on Windows: have been using it with Cygwin for years, zero issues. So, WSL wasn't a hard requirement.
The fact that software needs to be specifically compiled for Cygwin is a big enough hassle on its own that I'd rather just use a "real" Linux environment and not have to deal with it.
I finally quit using it because I got Starlink at my house and now have enough bandwidth to just let Syncthing keep the machines in sync. But if you need to sync through a hard drive you carry around FreeFileSync is great.
This is due to parallel (threaded) copying, which is a paid-for feature in recent versions.
If you need fast copying, "robocopy" comes bundled with Windows and it has /mt option that allows spawning multiple copying threads. This is as fast as gets, beating even this tool with ease.
In my experience, the older PortableApp versions of FreeFileSync continue to work just fine.
For Linux I bit the bullet and learned rsync and a little bash programming. I was putting this off for a while but happy with my really simple script.
Inspecting file tree differences is key to all of those actions, as far as I am concerned, and FreeFileSync does it best, and is multiplatform to boot.
But yes, BC is great too, and it was what I was using before.
Syncthing is automated/daemon, so the syncing happens in the background automatically. FreeFileSync's default behavior requires manual start/stop of sync jobs, though it does have an optional real-time sync feature.
The main advantage of Syncthing is that it supports multiple hosts/locations for the same backup, and that syncing is P2P between the hosts.
FFS is closer to Rsync and the main feature is fast and detailed file tree inspection and conflict resolution with the help of GUI.
Sources so people know I'm not crazy:
Also, the "Donation" edition is smelly, just be honest and call it "Pro" version to give consumer rights to the buyer.
Like - rsync
- rclone
- restic
- rdedup
- etc.
[1]https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/15-749/READINGS/required/c...
[2]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
For example, I get live stats (bandwidth, files/second, etc. on a chart) during sync operations when using FreeFileSync. Unison only shows bandwidth, and it's usually inaccurate.
Though, I haven't used FreeFileSync with large backups yet, so I don't yet know how it compares to Unison in terms of performance.
Does anyone know if this is a technical limitation? It seemed like such a core thing to me but it just kept coming up missing.
Outside of rsync, the ‘sync’ term almost invariably refers to bi-directional synchronization, with data going between both systems, so when the process is complete, both sides match. Rsync does not do this—it sends files one way only, which is what most people would refer to as a ‘mirror’.
Every other “sync” tool does things bidirectionally, so rsync really doesn’t belong in a comparison with other sync tools.
P.S. I’m aware that people who have never known a world without rsync may not realize that there’s a very real dividing line here, and this concept is very much one of the first the needs to be explained to people when first learning rsync.
[1] https://linux.die.net/man/1/mirrordir
[2] http://www.landley.net/kdocs/als1999/Conference/PSheer2/Mirr...
Personally I just call both types sync, and remember it can be bidirectional or unidirectional.
And it displays ads?
UI looks noisier to me.