 Hey everybody, welcome to Tutor Terrific. Thanks for stopping by to see another one of my computer tech videos If you're interested in syncing folders or files between computers or drives or just between two different folders You've come to the right place. I'm going to show you a free Microsoft software called sync toy And it is a great tool it's free to use to do those very tasks syncing between different computers on a network syncing a particular folder from your Hard drive to an external drive for backup purposes anything like that can be done And I'm going to show you how to run it automatically from the task scheduler, which is really really useful And if you need to look back at this you can obviously rewind the video But sync toy shows you how to do all this in their help folders in the program So how do we get to the program? I first want to show you the logo because there's not a lot of pictures of this logo out there when you download the program you don't necessarily get a shortcut on your desktop for sync toy and This is what the logo looks like when the program opens. So make sure this is what you've got And it looks like this now sync toy version 2.1 has been the version since Windows 7 came out So it is compatible with 7 8 and 10 I've used it personally on Windows 7 first when I first discovered it and Windows 10 and it works flawlessly in both and I've heard it works on all three Windows 7 8 and 10. So it's free go ahead and grab it It works wonderful. It's really easy to use. How do you know you have the right place? Well, you can type in sync toy download sync toy 2.1 Microsoft download and it will take you to HTTPS colon slash slash www.microsoft.com make sure that's in the URL I'll put the link in the description below So that you can be sure you're at the right place It should look something like this if you find this video Recently after I posted it it might have a different ad But this button is where you want to click to download sync toy 2.1. You'll download the executable file You'll make sure that I believe it selects the correct version if you're 64-bit architecture or 32-bit architecture It'll just decide which one by analyzing your computer for you But you'll get the right one and I have 64 bits. So I want to make sure mine says x64 in the program name So you download it and then you'll open the executable file and you install sync toy So this is what the program looks like. It's very simple. Here's the logo. You'll see some Windows 7 icons there. This is Hasn't really been updated since Windows 7 and it doesn't need to be it works fine So you won't have any folder pairs and I'll explain what that means in a second You won't have any folder pairs set up because you haven't set up anything to sync between one folder and another So this program works by syncing one folder or copying or echoing and I'll explain what all those mean in a second From one folder to another. Okay. And so you have to set up these what are called folder pairs Yourself now you can easily do that. You can create a new folder pair The way I've set up sync toy personally is to back up all of my documents my Dropbox files My Google Drive files my pictures and my videos from one location on my hard drive my C drive to a location on an external drive, but I've in the past set it up to Synchronize my documents and these types of files between two different computers and so It has lots of different Variations in its usage. So I'm going to show you since you won't see any folder pairs how to create a new folder pair Put this little button down here, and you'll see left folder right folder left folder is where the things begin Okay, and you're going to have your files here for sure the files that you want to save or copy or sync so you can either type the long address for your files or You can browse a folder. So I have a particular folder selected. So I'm going to go to my user So I can see everything. That's mine. I'm going to go to my documents This is Windows 10 by the way as you can see and I'm going to go to compositions I'm going to go to solo piano now when you select a folder. It does not have to be The base folder it can be a folder with other folders inside of it It will copy or synchronize or echo anything inside any particular location you pick So I'm going to pick this one and the address is shown up here You can see my username my documents composition solo piano. It stops there You could keep going if you wanted to go to a root folder Then you will select another folder somewhere else that you want to interact with your left folder So you'll browse for that now I'm going to go to a different location on my external drive that I'm using to back up things I calling it local disc D. You might have a different name for it. So I have Solo piano on this side now it highlights. You don't need to double-click. You just press okay Your folders do not have to have the same name. Obviously your destinations are not the same for the left and right So it's not looking for identical naming So your other folder on the right side could be named something completely different at the end Doesn't have to be the same name, but for what I'm doing. I'm trying to copy So now I need to get into the three options you have click next Here are the three options you have and they explain it pretty thoroughly so synchronize if you click synchronize that means any Updates you do to either the left or right folder location will be copied to the other folder So let's say you change something on the left side on your hard drive You add a folder just add a file to solo piano It will when it runs it will add that file To the right folder if you decide to delete it later from the right folder It will then delete it from the left folder the next time sink toy runs So new updates and files are copied both ways. That's what we say Renames and delete so if you rename a file it will show up on the right folder If you rename something in the right folder later, it will show up in the left folder So what this does is removes any hierarchy the left folder has over the right. They both do the same thing That's what synchronize it's used for Most people if they're using networked computers between two different places and they like using maybe One computer at some points and one computer other times and they want the same they want them to look identical They would choose synchronize echo is one that people would choose if they want to maybe back up their files Make create a copy of the files They use on in a particular folder on their computer what this does is it only updates files Left to right so the left folders where the changes are initially made and in the right folder They are then copied over there all the changes, okay? So this is overriding what's in the right folder, but not going back and changing what's in the left folder Renames and deletes on the left are repeated on the right when sync toy runs So this is what I'm using currently with all my folders Contribute is slightly different and maybe those who are concerned with maybe Saving older versions of files might do it this way. So new and updated files are copied left to right like the echo, but Renames are also copied from left to right, but no deletions So if you delete a folder on the left, it will not be deleted on the right when it comes to contribute So you'll save all your older versions of Your files no deletions will occur. So that's something that someone might do. I'm going to choose echo And I'm gonna prick click. Excuse me click next and then it's gonna ask me to name my folder pair So my folder pair I could name it anything I want. So I'm gonna name it solo piano Sync just to show you how it shows up and you click finish Then that folder pair after a second will show up in your set of all folder pairs It just takes a second and there it is now it's showing you everything that you have done Now you are limited in what you can edit in This folder pair. Okay, you can change two different types of things You can change the action. You can say, okay, I didn't want to echo I want to synchronize why want to contribute? That's fine. Or you can change The types of files to include or exclude now for those who are copying or those who are syncing you would just leave this alone But if you've got some types of files, you don't want Copied over for example, you could exclude system files or you could exclude hidden files Which are sometimes synonymous with system files in Windows Activate for run all means you can down here There's an option to run all after I get out of this window this one will run once you press that save overwritten files in the recycle bin You can that's what it automatically does with sync toy all the files that are overwritten the older version is thrown in the recycle bin It's not deleted and if you click this off, it won't put them in the recycle bin. It'll delete them So that's up to your preference Those are only two things you can change you cannot change the destination So if you screw up on the destination, you have to delete the folder pair and you can do that right here And it'll allow you to delete it before I delete it. I just want to show you can rename the folder pair Solo piano sync. Let's say two and then that name change will reflect So I'm going to delete this folder pair Because I'm not going to use it and so it just disappears and you have to start over if you didn't mean to do that So just be aware that it's free and to do a little bit of work can't change the destinations But you don't have to pay for it and it works really well Now when you run this program, you will click run down here But if you've selected a particular sync to do it will only run one at a time But if you click all folder pairs, it'll show you what it showed me when I Put this window up in the first place It'll show you all the folder pairs and you can just run all and here's what it looks like when you run a certain set of folders it goes through and looks between the left and right for Changes differences and stuff. It looks at dates and everything. That's going to give you a rundown of operations now Failed operations will show up in red numbered and Blue operations will show up as successful operations I'm not going to have any operations to do because I've already done them this morning when I logged on But I just want to show you what this looks like you can see the exact folder. It's looking in you can see the actions it's doing If you've got changes to be made it's going to make those changes and it's really nice. So this is something you don't have to Click on here and then make happen. You got to remember to do it and all this You can make you this happen automatically and you can stop it If you don't want to do it up look right here. You're seeing Successes some failures things like that. I'll tell you the type of operation and I'll tell you the number of successes fails and totals So I'm having some failed files Because I've got some Google Drive documents that some other people shared with me and the names are too long So when the names are extremely long Sync toy has a problem reading them, but I'm talking like Extremely super super duper long with lots of address changes and lots of slashes and things like that Most people don't have to deal with this. Okay, and so it's copying a video This is copying the video. I just made Just a second ago. And so that takes a while videos will take a while, but it's going to show you your failed operations and When you have a failed operation all these numbers show up in red. So I have three successful overwrites one successful new one success one failed new and 11 failed create folders because these folders are really long and they're not folders that I've ever had you won't usually have this issue Okay, so I'm going to stop this and You can stop right in the middle of an action and that's fine. It'll just it won't erase anything you just did It'll just won't continue, but you can't look you can't go back and resume. So once you stop you're done And so that's sync toy Run manually. Now. What if you want to run it? Automatically like I do. Well, you can do that On Windows 10 you go down to this little Cortana search bubble and type the word task When you type the word task, you can see the task scheduler, which is an app that comes as a system app with Windows automatically Just double click that And what you'll see is a set of all the tasks that you've set up on your computer And you can look at those by looking at the task scheduler library Now these show you the tasks that are either running right now or running on your logon I have created one called sync task to run sync toy and do all the folder pair Operations when I log on my computer. How do I do that? Well? I'm going to show you where to go. What we're going to do is create a task Formal task, okay, and this is what the window looks like and so you're going to go here and you're going to name it whatever you want I chose sync task for mine and It's gonna you don't need to describe anything You don't need to set a location You do want to run only when users logged on if you want this to automatically happen when you log on You can set it to do other things like run whether the user is logged on or not But if you only have one log on our computer because it's your personal computer That would be unnecessary because if you're not logged on nobody else is so you need to decide for your particular situation What's best? Now you go to triggers now you can add a trigger. Okay, you play clicking new and What you want to do is you want to set it up to run Every time the computer logs on So I will show you what that looks like on my particular Thing, but right now I'll just show you you just look at at log on Okay, or at startup to setting on what you want to do and you would click that you won't need to set up any of this Other stuff, but you can as you can see it's very very versatile You could set up when this tasks runs how often it runs what time it runs. It's really nice Okay, so that's triggers Actions now. What is it going to do that your tasks need to tell the task what to do you haven't told it what to do yet? so what I would do is I'd click my particular program script, which is the executable application file for sync toy command file So I'm going to show you what that looks like here and we need to add an argument the particular argument We're going to add is dash R what dash R tells Task scheduler to do is to run all the folder pairs. That's the code And so I'm going to go to my particular thing You don't set you don't need to set up any conditions or settings You don't you change any of that so I'm going to open my particular sync task Which allows you to edit your task and it's going to show me the same windows See I've got my name for my task. I'm running when the users locked on my trigger is at log on Now I can edit that and you could see all the options I showed you earlier But I just want it to be at log on here's the action to start a program now I'm going to open this so you can see I looked up this particular program and you'll see I've made the name nice and big for you below This is where the file is and this is what it is sync toy command dot exe and You could search for that in your programs or you could just copy this name down and use it That's how I installs on your computer. That's where it is. That's its name Then you add the argument slash Dash are don't add anything and start in just leave it like this and then it will run After you log on all the folder pairs that you've set up Okay, I haven't really changed any of this other stuff just like you saw before and history is disabled So I'm not keeping a history of these logs. I don't need to okay So when I log on to my computer sync toy runs, I'm going to show you what that looks like All right, so I'm going to go ahead and log on to my computer now I restarted it and there you see this window open. Okay, this is the command prompt and This is running my tasks that I started I'm sure I could figure out a way to get it to not show that window But I just wanted to show you exactly what all my programs are starting so you could be see this This is a log up. This is what the program looks like now I need to get my computer a second before I start to get it to move around but this is what it looks like and After a while, it's going to start populating the tasks that is doing on here So you could see what's happening now, of course if you don't want to see this and You aren't willing to go through look task over to figure out how to turn it off You just minimize it and then it's not there, but as you can see down here It's got the sync toy logo So it's a toy runs. It doesn't have its own special window. It sets up. It's a really basic program and As it runs you're going to see some things occur So I'm going to fast forward to that point and then it closes just like that when it's all finished If you didn't already minimize it. So that's it people that sync toy version 2.1 for Microsoft free software Set up with the task scheduler to run automatically. Thanks you guys so much for watching this two-to-truvific video This is Falconator signing out