[Starry Night]

Does anyone use ChronoSync on a regular basis? What do you think of it? Has it been reliable for you?

Seagate bundles Bounce Back Express with their hard drives, has anyone used it? What do you think about it?

Thanks.

[bbales]

I have used both these programs. I purchased an ABS drive a few years ago that had a backup program in it. That program has since been upgraded to BounceBack. It's very easy to use and I like it quite a bit. HOWEVER -- I noted once that the synchronization feature exists only in the Windows version. Because I use that software mostly to back up my desktop, I also purchased Chronosync for synchronizing my main word processing documents folder between my desktop and my laptop.

It SEEMS to work fine. Once I had made a change (moving a document inside a folder that was inside another folder) -- and when I syned the two, my laptop did not also move the file.

Having said that, I think there were some rules I didn't follow. And it's not like the file was missing -- it just didn't move it.

But overall I've been pretty happy with it. It seems to work pretty well.

I'm not sure I was very helpful. As I said, I use the two programs for different uses, by and large. But one factor may be price -- isn't bounceback pretty expensive? Or is it included.

And of course, there's always Carbon Copy Cloner, which you can get with a syncing feature as well.

[bbales]

oh -- another suggestion. Go on versiontracker and macupdate, and see what users have to say about the two programs.

[Starry Night]

Originally posted by bbales:
oh -- another suggestion. Go on versiontracker and macupdate, and see what users have to say about the two programs.

Thanks for the suggestions. I used CCC to clone (just a few days ago) my HD to the backup Seagate hard drive and it worked very well, the clone boots just fine and seems to work. But I'm uneasy about using CCC on a regular basis because it has access to so much stuff. That's not based on any science, just my gut feeling. That the clone is bootable and functioning is enough for me in terms of CCC. For regular daily backups/syncs, I'm leaning towards ChronoSync because I can easily specify what to transfer and what not to transfer. For instance I can simply sync the Home folder without messing around with the entire system.

I like the ChronoSync demo, just wanted to hear what folks here think about it.

As for Bounce Back Express, it came bundled with the Seagate hard drive. It's the lite version of Bounce Back. I have it here on the Seagate CD, just wondering if it's useful, there's no mention of it at VT or MU.

Thanks!

[bbales]

Actually, I like the specificity of Chronosync as well. I have different "backups" set -- my word processing files to my laptop, for example, and then an entirely different set for syncing my photos to an external drive.

One thing you could do is do a sync -- and then immediately do a "get info" on the two folders to see if they look like they match.

[Starry Night]

Originally posted by bbales:
Actually, I like the specificity of Chronosync as well. I have different "backups" set -- my word processing files to my laptop, for example, and then an entirely different set for syncing my photos to an external drive.

One thing you could do is do a sync -- and then immediately do a "get info" on the two folders to see if they look like they match.

Good idea, thanks for the tip!

[geekwagon]

I purchased CronoSync and I use it a couple of times a day. My scenario is that I have a G5 at home, and a G5 at work, and I run ChronoSync on my Powerbook to keep my Documents and Development folders in sync between all three machines.

ChronoSync is easily the best synchronization program I have ever used or seen. Since it uses a database of files it is really fast when you have a lot of small files that don't change all that often (like my Development folder, which is full of crap like wxWidgets source trees) unlike programs like rsync that are stateless and have to checksum all the files every time you sync to make sure they haven't changed. It also makes tracking deletions worthwhile, I have never had an issue with ChronoSync copying a file back that I deleted from another machine.

The other thing I love about ChronoSync is the "Trial Sync" mode. I basically use this every time because it gives you a nice list of all the files it is going to sync. That way if I temporarily have a folder of crap that I don't really want to sync I can just uncheck the root folder from the list and the whole subtree doesn't get synced. Originally I used Trial Sync because I was afraid it was going to do something stupid, but so far it never has. So now I mostly spend about 5 seconds zinging through the list to see if there was anything stupid *I* did like forgetting to clean up a folder or huge temporary file that I meant to delete. The rules for include/exclude work really well too.

After having tried basically every other sync program, I still think ChronoSync is the best $40 I have ever spent on a utility. I don't know if I would bother with it if I was just doing simple one-way push backups, a utility like CCC or something would probably work just as well. But for doing two-way syncs I couldn't find anything better.

I dunno what their support is like as I haven't needed it yet... The readme files for the new versions are always full of esoteric fixes that would have to come from customers so they must be fairly responsive to such things.

Sorry for the gushing but I really like this software.

[bbales]

Geekwagon -- I meant to mention the trial sync feature. I, too, use that just to make sure I didn't goof something up!

As a fairly new user of this software, I do like hearing how much you like it. Confirms my thinking.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by Starry Night:
Does anyone use ChronoSync on a regular basis? What do you think of it? Has it been reliable for you?

Seagate bundles Bounce Back Express with their hard drives, has anyone used it? What do you think about it?

Thanks.

I use it a couple times daily. I find it excellent -- it's fast, it's reliable, and it's easy to set up. I have it synchronize between an external firewire drive (which I boot off of when I'm in the office, as it's faster), and the internal laptop drive. I also have it sync the firewire drive with a network mounted drive.

"Trial" sync is also nice as it gives you an idea of what will happen while you're configuring, as I do a 2-way sync (when I take my laptop and travel, I want to be able to get the stuff easily back on my external drive).

I was using You Synchronize prior to ChronoSync (I was given a copy), but it was too hard to use -- because you couldn't get a list of directories and "exclude" some via a checkbox, you had to manually enter them (what a HUGE PITA with folders like /Library/Application Support where I wanted to sync 3 and exclude 50!), and because it was pretty slow and CPU intensive (granted they default to using checksums to determine if files have changed rather than modification date like ChronoSync, but I think the latter is reliable enough in my testing). I decided to pay the $30 for ChronoSync, it's worth it to me.

[Starry Night]

Originally posted by geekwagon:
I don't know if I would bother with it if I was just doing simple one-way push backups, a utility like CCC or something would probably work just as well. But for doing two-way syncs I couldn't find anything better.

I dunno what their support is like as I haven't needed it yet... The readme files for the new versions are always full of esoteric fixes that would have to come from customers so they must be fairly responsive to such things.

Sorry for the gushing but I really like this software.

Thanks for all of the replies. Geekwagon, I've thought seriously about using CCC w/Psync for regular backups to my cloned HD. It probably would work just fine, thousands seem to think so, and would be a good bit less expensive than ChronoSync, not that $30 is all that much. But a couple of things bothered me in my research of CCC.

1) At the CCC website, they don't claim that CCC will necessarily make a perfect copy, instead they say one must go try the copy out for awhile to make sure it behaves normally. I don't want to be bothered having to check on the clone to make sure it's still bootable and that everything is functioning properly each time I re-copy it. I've begun doing that for the first clone, and it's quite time consuming. Once I've checked everything out once, that'll be enough. Having to investigate the entire HD each time is too much for me. Granted I could just trust that everything went fine, but the CCC developer guides against that.

2) CCC doesn't seem to have the sync report that ChronoSync has. ChronoSync both via that report and via the Trial Sync, makes easy for me to know what's going on. It also has an error report and will supposedly prompt me to sync again should an error arise.

3) ChronoSync has nice management of deletions, making it a more true backup solution. CCC seems to just blast everything.

4) I only essentially need my Home folder backed up to the FireWire drive, and my Documents folder sent to a compact flash card. CCC doesn't allow for that specificity, it copies or syncs everything. Also, what if my main HD has some sort of problem? It seems to me CCC would copy those problems to my backup drive. I'd rather just keep the Home folder in sync. The clone seems to work fine so far, why mess with success, especially given that CCC's website suggest problems could arise?

5) Lastly, I read through the forums at CCC's website (bombich.com). I found the helpers there to be a bit unprofessional. They relate to their customers often in a very condescending way as if any problem attributed to CCC is an assault on their manhood. True, they work to solve the problems, but it seemed to often be in a "you're an idiot, but I'll help you anyway" sort of way.

In contrast, I've written 3-4 emails to the developer of ChronoSync, I believe his name is Joe. Some of my questions were good ones, in hind sight, some of my questions were a bit ignorant, revealing the limitations of my computer knowledge. Each time Joe responded back promptly and professionally. The entire operation seemed more polished than Bombich's, gives me more confidence in the product.

And $30 for ChronoSync isn't bad given many backup solutions go for much much more.

Glad to hear others like ChronoSync, gives me even more confidence in the product!