I recently discovered Synctoy while searching for a simple tool for automatically saving my music collection to an external hard drive. As I just wanted to back-up my data, I was mainly interested in its echo-mode. The set-up was quite easy and everything seemed to work fine. (The two folders were syncronized before I configured Synctoy to ensure that everything starts fine)
After everything was configured I modified some files in my source folder (i.e. the "left folder"), changed some tags and so on. When it came to sync the whole thing, everything seemed to work fine. Looking at the files in the right folder, however, I noticed that some of the folders that I changed were ignored and the changes were not applied to the right folder. The ignored folders were checked in the "select subfolders" menu (why wouldn't they be?) and they do not seem extraordinary in any way, but Synctoy just overlooks them somehow.
Now some pictures to illustrate what I mean exactly: I created a file "text.txt" for testing purposes and copied it to a folder which was synced properly.
If I copy the test-file to one of the not-working folders, I get nothing: http://i41.tinypic.com/14w7lax.jpg So, as you see, Synctoy somehow skips them. (The not-working folder used here as is named "Tomte" and contains five subfolders, if that is of any relevance.)
Has anyone an idea, what could be the problem?
Synctoy would be a great tool provided that everything is reliably synchronized. Otherwise it is just to difficult to track down the files which are not synchronized If one has made many changes. I'm sorry if such a thread already exists, but I couldn't find one. If you need more information about my configuration or I am just being stupid and overlook something, please tell me so.
We detect system folders by attributes set on the file/folder. It looks like your misbehaving folder has the "S" attribute set on the folder. You can confirm this by doing an "attrib <folder name>".
I cannot think of a reason why SyncToy would ignore a folder like that implictily unless it had been deselected in the folder paid. Since you have identified the folders that seem to have difficulty sync'ing can you create a new folder pair between this misbehaving folder and a temporary location somewhere else and see if the files sync over? Use SyncToy to copy the files over ( not copying them over manually ) and let us know what happens.
I have done as you suggested and created an extra folder pair between that malicous folder and another location. Funnily enough: It works. All changes are recognized correctly. However, it only works with the new folder pair that directly uses that folder as its left folder. The folder is still skipped if I use my "real" folder pair where my "music"-folder is the left folder and the misbehaving folder is a subfolder of it.
As I don't have too much faith in my powers of clear explanation, here a short overview about my "test-setup": (The "Tomte"-folder, the subfolder of "Music", was used as an example again and was deliberately modified.)
Original folder pair: C:\Users\Me\Music -> M:\Music
Everything is fine here. The changes are applied correctly.
Can you imagine any reason for this strange behavior?
Thank you for your help.
PS: I just noticed that if I use the sync-mode the program wants to copy the omitted folders from the right to the left folder. (After I copied them to the right folder manually) That means that the synchronisation seems only to work from "right to left" for those folders. Strange, isn't it? Synctoy thinks that the folders don't exist on the left side. That would explain the failure of the echo-mode, but not the problem itself.
Another notice: I think I found the source of the problem. It only works properly for my real folder pair if I do not select "Exclude system files". I wonder why? After all, my music folder shouldn't be regarded as a system file? It certainly includes files like "desktop.ini", but so do the other folders that are working properly. Besides, my testing folder pair (see above) also works with "exclude system files" selected.
We detect system folders by attributes set on the file/folder. It looks like your misbehaving folder has the "S" attribute set on the folder. You can confirm this by doing an "attrib <folder name>".
seems like you are right: The attribute was indeed set to "S". I am not sure why this is the case, because I didn't set it, but anyway, it is good to know the cause of the problem. Everything worked well after I removed this attribute. Now I only have to find all music folders with "S" set and remove it.
Synctoy ignores specific folders
