OnTheSync - what it does

OnTheSync is a folder synchronisation utility. It's designed to compare the contents of two folders, and copy the latest versions (of files) between them as required.

Just say you've got 2 copies of all your important files - one on your main computer at home, and the other on your laptop, USB stick or portable hard drive. While you're at the office (or at uni, or anywhere else), you might make some changes - updating some of the files at the office, and perhaps saving some new files. And when you get home, you might change a few more files on your main computer, and add some new ones too. Rather than having to figure out which files have changed in each location (so you can copy them across to the other location), just run OnTheSync and let it do the work for you.

Originally written as a tool to synchronise multiple copies of users' MP3 collections (hence the music note icon), over the past 4 years OnTheSync has grown to be a lot more. It's become very popular with users all over the world, including:

students - synchronising their assignments and study notes between their main copy and the USB stick (or portable hard drive) they take to class with them each day
engineers - and other professionals who work with large data files
anyone wanting an easy way to backup their files, without having to copy every file each time

OnTheSync is totally free for personal and commercial use - you can download it below. Try it out, we're sure you'll love how much it simplifies your backups and the fact that it saves you time as well. And if there's any other features you'd like to see in OnTheSync, please let us know.

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Features

OnTheSync has a range of advanced features designed to make it the perfect tool for a variety of purposes:

gives you the ability to synchronise in both directions - handy if files have changed in both locations
recognises network locations and mapped drives
lets you choose a cutoff date or time frame - if you only want to sync the more recent files
provides an option to move files rather than copying them
allows you to decide whether to copy the newer (default) or larger file
preserves file attributes when copying/moving files, or you can specify which attributes (e.g. Read Only) to set
lets you specify whether to open one/both/none of the synced folders after the operation has completed
provides an adjustable priority - so you can sync faster if you're in a hurry, or slower if you want to keep using your computer while syncing (with no noticeable difference in performance)
shows mouseover tooltips on the Settings dialog, to explain all the options in plain English
displays a list of files that will be copied; allows you to save this file list, and to see the total size of all files to be copied
allows you to delete the listed files rather than copying them - handy when removing old files from a backup copy (see below)
displays easily legible tick and cross icons after the sync - so you can see at a glance whether the folders were synced successfully
accepts a "-run" command line parameter - so you can schedule it to run automatically with Windows Scheduler

Don't forget to check out the handy hints and tips at the bottom of this page.

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What it won't do

It's a great program overall, but there's a few things that OnTheSync doesn't do. We thought we'd better bring these to your attention so you know exactly how the program will behave when you run it:

OnTheSync won't recognise that a file has been renamed, or moved to a different folder - There are programs that can do this, but OnTheSync isn't one of them. These types of programs need to be running constantly and they monitor every file operation, which would slow your computer down considerably. We thought it would be much better to provide a utlity program that you can just run when you need it, rather than one that needs to be running continuously in the background.
OnTheSync won't merge files - If both copies of a file have changed, OnTheSync will simply copy the newer one (or larger one, if this option has been set). It's not a good idea to have to try and merge files - the safer option is to run OnTheSync more frequently to make sure you're always working on the latest version of the file. (If you need to compare two versions of the same file, try WinMerge - it's open source and it's free!)
OnTheSync won't prompt you to authenticate - If you're working with a variety of network locations that require security credentials, when you should enter your username and password you should tick the "Remember my password" checkbox. Then OnTheSync can use these credentials when it needs to connect to that location.

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Download

The current version of OnTheSync is version 1.5.

You can download it by clicking the download button:

(The download is supplied as a Windows installer inside a Zip file - so you need to download the Zip file, open it, and then double-click the Windows installer MSI file to install the program.)

Note that OnTheSync requires Microsoft's .NET framework version 2.0. (We have not detected .NET 2.0 as installed on this computer.) If required, the .NET framework 2.0 installer can be downloaded from here:

OnTheSync runs on any version of Windows where the .NET framework version 2.0 can be installed, including:

Windows 7
Windows Server 2008
Windows Vista
Windows Server 2003
Windows XP (Service Pack 2 or higher)
Windows 2000 (Service Pack 3)
Windows ME
Windows 98 (including Second Edition)

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Handy hints and tips

Use OnTheSync to generate an MP3 playlist of all your new music

If you want to create a list of all your newest music files, simply do the following:

Run OnTheSync.
Click the Settings button.
Under the General Options section, ensure that the "Warn if number of files exceeds..." option is ticked, and the number is set to zero. (This ensures that OnTheSync will display a list of the files found.)
Under the General Options section, ensure that the "Only copy/move files if modified" option is ticked. Set the cutoff date or time frame (see Settings screenshot above) to the date range you want.
Click OK to exit the Settings dialog.
On the main OnTheSync screen, set the File Type(s) filter to be MP3 (or whatever your music format is).
Still on the main OnTheSync screen, set Location 1 to be the directory which contains your music files.
Set Location 2 to be an empty directory.
In the Location section, select "Location 1 to 2".
Click the Run button.
When OnTheSync prompts you to display the file list, choose Yes.
On the File List dialog, click the Save List button.
Enter a file name for your playlist. In the "Save as type" drop-down list, choose "MP3 Playlist (*.m3u)". Click the Save button.
Click the Cancel button to exit the File List dialog without copying any files, and the Done button to close OnTheSync.

How to delete redundant files from your backup easily

Over time, the backup copy of your data may end up with a range of redundant files - maybe they were moved, renamed or deleted. To remove these easily, simply run OnTheSync in the reverse direction:

Run OnTheSync.
Click the Settings button.
Under the General Options section, ensure that the "Warn if number of files exceeds..." option is ticked, and the number is set to zero. (This ensures that OnTheSync will display a list of the files found.)
Click OK to exit the Settings dialog.
On the main OnTheSync screen, set Location 1 to be the directory which contains your main file store.
Set Location 2 to the backup directory.
In the Location section, select "Location 2 to 1". (Please double-check that you have these settings correct, or you may delete files from your main data store!)
Click the Run button.
When OnTheSync prompts you to display the file list, choose Yes. This should list the files that exist in the backup but not in the main file store - the redundant files
On the File List dialog, click the Delete button. Click Yes when the confirmation prompt appears.
Click the Done button to close OnTheSync.

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