you do know you should back up all your data on a regular basis, don’t you?

well….. yes, so do I – but becoming sloppy or forgetful is easily done – with disastrous consequences as I’ve had to find out the hard way… after a stressful time with getting the end of year exhibition for my students organised and setup – I was quite exhausted and no longer in my usual working routine.

Backing up the vital files regarding my students – I had neglected to save my own working files on my external drive – intending to take some time to properly archive my files and backup.
Never ever postpone at this stage !!! My HD started behaving strangely – before I had a chance to save any files – it just died… completely… so – nothing left to do but replace my HD and cope with having lost a lot of files…

With a brand new hard drive now – I am determined not to experience such a disaster ever again ;) Looking around online for an easy and efficient backup app to sync the folders on my mac to the external drives – I came across FileSync by R Charles Flickinger – which is free with a polite request from the author to register one of his other applications (check those out at designersdomain.com).

There are many different sync programs out there – some small and sweet – others quite huge and extensive with various options. I prefer small and sweet – easy to use and efficient in its processing.
And FileSync certainly meets all my needs ;)
The main window is very straight forward and easy to understand – allowing you to add a number of different sync setups. You can add, edit and delete these at any time.

Though very easy on first glance – I did get my first testrun wrong as I did not read the instructions within the next window. To synchronise 2 folder you specify your master – which is the folder you want to back up – and then the copy. I assumed I needed to specify the same folder – this time on the external backup device. But you do NOT set this folder – rather the folder it is located in, the folder containing the sync folder.

Once you’ve added a new folder – it will appear in the main window with its check box ticked by default.



To perform an overall backup of all set folder – ensure that all check boxes are ticked and click ‘sync’. To synchronise a specific folder – you can simply select it in the main window, leaving all other deselected, and click the ‘sync’ button.
During the sync process – you will see the list of files being processed. Once complete – the list will remain in its window – ready for you to look through or save as text file. This is a very handy additional feature as you can double check which files you worked on recently as well as allowing you to keep records of changes made.
NOTE: make sure to read the ‘ReadMe’ file carefully for the ‘mirror’ option.
Well, that’s my bit of advice for you :) back up – BACK UP – back up !!!