Media files need to be stored twice?

It appears to me that my two options are to backup the music, pictures and videos using SmartWare and place a second copy in the shares area or to find 3rd party backup software that will just write the new files into the shares without the directory tree.

My next question is who makes backup software that will do what I need?

Currently playing with the free Microsoft SyncToy.

Looks promising. Allows multiple folder sync definitions. Allows exclusion of sub-folders. Will preview what it’s going to do. Has a number of sync options.

Will take some time to set up, but, once done, looks like it will be fairly turnkey.

[edit] Hmmm… finding lots of ‘differences’ for identical timestamp files, having just run my xcopy backup script first. It may shut up once it’s allowed to copy these identical files, but it’s not a great sign.

As already suggested:

xcopy (DOS command line/batch file)
robocopy (Windows Resource kit command line & GUI front ends available)
SyncToy

All Microsoft
All free
All need a bit of user effort to implement.

Thanks. I’m giving one called FreeFileSync a try.

Thanks. I’m giving one called FreeFileSync a try.

SyncToy was too keen to copy files unnecessarily, so I followed your suggestion.

FreeFileSync looks to be behaving much better; not suggesting unnecessary copying, and is much faster at scanning. The only negative so far is I’ve not found a way to suppress copying empty folders; not that big a deal.

The ability to add lots of individually-controlled folder syncs, each with their own exclude lists, is very like my xcopy script. Being able to specify the sync behaviour (mirror/two-way, etc), is a step up from xcopy, and will allow me to remove ‘dead’ files from my static backups (USB disks), whilst synchronising my livefolders.

It’s looking promising to replace my xcopy script, which took a bit of manual effort to sort out obsolete/new files.

Good find, thanks.

FreeFileSync do a got job for me for the last 2 years.
You can create batch jobs and add it to the windows task scheduler or trigger it with the realtime sync option:

:+1: