Member Avatar for Idefreeze

Hello everyone,
I'm new here but hopefully I'm not double posting something already in another thread.

The problem is that I'm not quite sur I'm using the correct keywords to search... Anyway back to my issue :

I've just acquired a laptop last month and as I have more or less the same use for it then my main computer (that is with mobility obviously), I'm always forced to "update" files from one computer to the other with a local network or with any external drive I may have around.

Ideally speaking, I would like to have some kind of smart synchronization of my user files on both computers, even dough it's quite a "huge" folder, that would suit perfectly my needs. I have no idea if it's possible to simply have a program that would only send what's new to the other computer whenever something have changed on one or the other, the same kind of programs one would have between a smart phone and computer...

If you have any idea of program doing something close to this please feel free to guide me.

Hope I've been clear enough.


_____________________

Cheers,
Idefreeze

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Dani AI

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Short practical summary and a recommended workflow that fits the laptop/desktop scenario you described.

Three useful approaches, with a few solid tools to try:

  • Always‑on, privacy‑focused peer‑to‑peer (automatic, real‑time): Syncthing — open source, runs on Windows/macOS/Linux and keeps devices in sync without a central cloud. (syncthing.net)
  • GUI + scheduled or event‑driven sync (good if you want a visual comparator and easy batch jobs): FreeFileSync (includes RealTimeSync and versioning options). (freefilesync.org)
  • Power user / explicit two‑way merge (you want careful conflict handling under your control): Unison — cross‑platform, two‑way sync with conflict detection. (github.com)
    For one‑way, efficient mirroring use rsync (very efficient incremental/delta transfers). For a commercial P2P option with heavy WAN optimization, Resilio Sync is another choice. (rsync.samba.org)

A short setup checklist you can apply immediately:

  1. Pick one tool and test it on a small folder first.
  2. For very large folders, do an initial seed by copying the files manually to the other machine (or an external drive) before turning on the sync — this avoids transferring the whole dataset over slow Wi‑Fi. Syncthing’s docs describe this “manual seeding” procedure. (docs.syncthing.net)
  3. Enable versioning/archives where available (so accidental deletes or bad overwrites can be recovered). FreeFileSync and Syncthing both support versioning strategies. (freefilesync.org)
  4. Exclude temp, caches and large build directories with ignore/exclude rules. 5) Keep a separate backup — sync is not a replacement for backups because deletions propagate. (docs.syncthing.net)

Tying this back to the thread: ’s “file synchronization” search direction is spot on; ’s automation question is exactly why Syncthing/Resilio (always‑on) or FreeFileSync+RealTimeSync (scheduled/triggered) are worth testing. Start small, verify the behavior on a test folder, then roll it out to the entire user folder once you’re happy with conflict handling and versioning.

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Member Avatar for gtd

These programs are open source and easy to use but most of them can't automate the synchronization.

Do you want to automate the synchronization so that you won't have to run the soft yourself each time you want to synchronize the content of the two computer's folders ?

Member Avatar for Cleaner007

Well. Did you try File Sync? im not sur but it seems to be the app you need for file synchronization. It's

Member Avatar for hughv

MS Sync Toy:

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