Keep things safe

Since starting my OU studies one of my primary concerns has been making sure I have adequate backups of all my OU data.  This is especially relevant to the current course being studied and the TMA being worked on.  There can be nothing more frustrating and depressing than loosing a TMA that is 90% complete and having to recreate it from scratch.  Data loss can come in many guises, such as hard disk failure; loosing a memory stick; corrupt file, and with this in mind I always have 3 copies available at any one time.  One on my home PC, one on my laptop and one on my work PC.  This sounds nice and secure but the problem has been in keeping the 3 machines synchronised.

Over the last few years I have tried various methods including manual copying and trials of commercial packages (i.e. Handy Backup).  Well today I have come across an Open Source program, Synkron, that looks as though it will do the job.

It has a number of features, including:

• Synchronise multiple folders
• Tabs allow you to have more synchronisations running at once
• Periodical synchronisations automatically sync your folders in selected intervals
• Restore files, which were overwritten during the synchronisation
• Add files and folders to black list to make sure they won't be synchronised in the future
• Make schedules and backup using multisync
• Propagate deletions

With multiple supported platforms:

• Apple Mac OS X (Universal)
• Microsoft Windows (Installer)
• Linux/Unix (Source code, RPM, Ubuntu, Archlinux and ALT Linux packages)

The one drawback is the lack of documentation, although there is a support forum.  Even so it is a simple program to use and I would recommend taking a look at it if you are wanting a way of synchronising data.