SyncToy 2.0 Beta now available!

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SyncToy 2.0 Beta was just released to the Microsoft.com Download Center and
can be installed from the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&displaylang=en

We heard your feedback on SyncToy 1.4 and the 2.0 version addresses many of
the user issues and concerns and adds some very useful new features. See
below for the list of improvements made in this release:

- Dynamic Drive Letter Assignment: Drive letter reassignment will now be
detected and updated in the folder pair definition.
- True Folder Sync: Folder creates, renames and deletes are now synchronized
for all SyncToy actions.
- Exclusion Filtering Based on Name: File exclusion based on name with exact
or fuzzy matching.
- Filtering Based on File Attributes: The ability to exclude files based on
one or more file attributes (Read-Only, System, Hidden).
- Unattended Folder Pair Execution: Addressed issues related to running
scheduled folder pairs while logged off.
- Folder Pairs With Shared Endpoints: Ability for folder pairs associated
with the same or different instances of SyncToy to share end-points.
- Command line enhancements: Added the ability to manage folder pairs via
the command line interface.
- Sync engine is also more robust insomuch that many single, file level
errors are skipped without affecting the entire sync operation.
- Sync Encrypted Files: Sync of Encrypted files works when local folder and
files are encrypted, which addresses the common scenario involving sync
between local, encrypted laptop PC folder and remote, unencrypted desktop PC
folder.
- 64-Bit compatibility
- Folder pair rename
- Sub-folder Exclusion Enhancements: Descendents creates under excluded
sub-folders are automatically excluded.
- Folder Pair Metadata Moved: Folder pair metadata removed from My Documents
to resolve any issues with server-based folder pair re-direction setup.

As the name suggests this is a Beta release (albeit well-tested inside
Microsoft) and we look forward to user feedback on it and to doing the final
release in the near future. Also, please review the release notes on the
download page before upgrading from 1.4 to 2.0.

Thanks
Ashish Shah
SyncToy Development Team
 
I have installed Synctoy 2.0 Beta. It contains a number of features to which
I have been looking forward to and seems to work OK, except for a few issues:

1. The user interface window does not display properly on my computer.
(Windows XP professional, Service pack 2; .NET Framework 2.0 Service pack 1;
Screen size 1280 x 1024)
a The folder pair frame is too wide and overlaps the right-hand frame.
That makes the left-hand part of the right hand frame invisible/unreachable
b Resizing the folder pair frame does not work properly. The frame can
be made wider but not narrower. (The minimum width that the frame can be
resized to is far to big)
c If the folder pair frame is made wider, the size of the whole window
is increased. (The right hand frame width is retained, not shrunk to fit in
the window).

2. Empty folders (which I use only on the primary machine and do not want
created on a secondary machine) cannot be deselected during an Echo
operation. (Checkboxes blurred)

3 Is there perhaps an e-mail address where I can send a screen print to a
developer to help demonstrate the user interface problem? - or any other bug
reports for that matter?
 
Hi,

Thanks for trying out the new SyncToy. We're working on getting an external
email alias setup so users can report SyncToy bugs with details. Meanwhile, I
have a couple of questions for you:

- This user interface issue you're having, was this not happening with
SyncToy 1.4? Did you upgrade from 1.4?
- Do you have any special display settings, such as large fonts, different
language settings, etc?

We have tested SyncToy 2.0 on the setup you mention below and we havent seen
any UI issues.

Regarding the empty folders question - I'm sorry this is by design now. We
will sync empty folders in the new release. If you would like to exclude them
from synchronization, you can use the sub-folder exclusion feature in the
folder pair options.

Thanks
-Ashish Shah
SyncToy Development
 
I had been doing manual backups of an older portable FAT32 drive onto a new
external NTFS drive via my Vista Business laptop.

This was taking an age so I gave SyncToy 2.0 a go.

Setting up a folder pair worked a treat and I noticed a speed improvement in
backing up the 13GB of data I have on my portable FAT32 drive.

A week later I wished to backup any incremental changes. I have the folder
pair set to synchronise, did a preview and set it to run. As it neared
completion I noticed that my system resources where maxed out and Synctoy
stopped working due to lack of memory resources. I have a new Vaio with 2Ghz
Core2 Duo and 2GB RAM so was surprised to see it running out of memory.

I tried again with the same result, nearing completion my system resources
maxed out so I stopped Synctoy.

I set the folder pair to Echo and tried again. Towards completion system
resources were again all in the red although the backup finished this time.

Should Synctoy 2.0 be maxing out my system?

Is this due to the older FAT32 drive? Should I reformat it or get a new one?
 
Your questions and comments:

The user interface works very well in 1.4. I followed the instructions on
how to upgrade from 1.4 to 2.0.
Because of the problems I experience I have since uninstalled 2.0 and went
back to 1.4.

I use large size (120DPI) fonts. US English

User interface: The problem I experience may be because of the service pack
of the .NET framework 2 which was installed when I installed VS2008 Beta 2. I
experience no problem with it after having gone back to 1.4

I realise the removal of empty folders is by design. It should however be
optional of course, because sometimes one would want to remove empty
subfolders and sometimes not!
I am thus proposing a vast improvement which would be very simple to
implement:
- Make the removal of empty folders optional (checkbox or whatever way you
prefer). Please?
Your proposal of subfolder exclusion is downright impractical in my case
because of the large number of subfolders involved.
 
Hi, can you please send us the details of the UI problem along with a screen
shot of what you're seeing to (e-mail address removed). I'll get back to you on
this thread. We'll investigate the issue and see what we can do about it. We
know of one problem with using large fonts but that was always there in
SyncToy, even in 1.4.

Regarding the empty folder thing - we have heard consistent feedback from
many users that they would like to have true folder sync which means that the
folder structure should match on both sides. It will be somewhat tough for us
to add support for optionally ignoring empty folders on the sync during this
release. I will take it down as a feature request for the next major
release.
 
We would very much like to investigate this issue - SyncToy shouldn't be
maxing out system resources. Can you give us some numbers please - the number
of files and folders your folder pair is synchronizing (the 13gb set). Was it
SyncToy that was using up all the VM and processor - i.e. can you verify this
in Task Manager?

I don't think it should be anything to do with the FAT32 drive but we need
to dig into this to figure that out.

Thanks
Ashish Shah
 
The details of the UI problem is in my first post of 11-3-2007
As soon as I get an opportunity I will re-install the beta and send the
screenprints by email.

As far as the "empty folder" issue is concerned: At least try to enable
manual selection/deselction of empty folders in the Preview mode. At the
moment the checkboxes are de-activated (grayed out)

Thanks
 
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