[Kelly Rothenber]

Just a question that has come up on another Apple board. I'm trying to synch my wife's iMac Home directory to her Home Directory on my iBook (under her own login name). I was told that I cannot just synch them together (using Sync or some other software) because I have to make sure the ByHost folder is not copied from one computer to another. (Home>username>Library>Preferences>ByHost). Why is that? Does it really matter?

I have been looking up backing/synching data in books and online all night and they only people who say this are a couple of helpers on Apple's Discussion board. When I look at each individual ByHost folder, the files are different anyway, so...

I'm just curious about this. It would be nice if I could just synch my wife's Home Directories and then back up everything on my iBook's CD-RW drive...

Thanks!

--Kelly

[NeilCharter]

There are quite a few programs that can sync folders. Check on Versiontracker.

If you want to sync documents etc then those programs should work. I would start small and test on a folder with a few files. I did try these a while back and the biggest problem was that some of these programs didn't automount the folders on the networked machine.

For setting files in Library, I would be very careful. I personally use .Mac which allows me to sync my browser bookmarks, iCal etc. I keep all my mail on the .Mac server which means I can access saved mail etc on any machine even my PC at work.

For backing up files Retrospect is good. I haven't tried any others though.


Hope that helped.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by Kelly Rothenber:
Just a question that has come up on another Apple board. I'm trying to synch my wife's iMac Home directory to her Home Directory on my iBook (under her own login name). I was told that I cannot just synch them together (using Sync or some other software) because I have to make sure the ByHost folder is not copied from one computer to another. (Home>username>Library>Preferences>ByHost). Why is that? Does it really matter?

I have been looking up backing/synching data in books and online all night and they only people who say this are a couple of helpers on Apple's Discussion board. When I look at each individual ByHost folder, the files are different anyway, so...

I'm just curious about this. It would be nice if I could just synch my wife's Home Directories and then back up everything on my iBook's CD-RW drive...

Thanks!

--Kelly

Shouldn't be a problem. Why not just omit that file? I synch a couple drives on a daily basis, and I omit a lot of stuff in ~/Library.

I'd recommend ChronoSync for the synching... mount the second drive (possibly via AFP share) and synch away. You could also do firewire target mode, but that requires rebooting every time, get the utility called "Sharepoints" and just share the home folder.

[Kelly Rothenber]

I remembered that I have Applecare on my iBook, so I called Apple Tech Support about this. Don't remember the details, but they say that I SHOULD NOT synch ByHost folders because it has something to do with Unix and each person's account on each computer. I didn't synch them yesterday anyway, but I thought it would be nice to find out why instead of just synching the entire Home directories...

--Kelly

[PubGuy]

Well I use "You Synchronize" to sync between my G4 Desktop and TiBook via IP over Firewire. I do it all the time, BUT I do not sync the entire Library folder, only certain folders I know contain data I want duplicated on both systems.