Topic: new HD

[Baz]

Hi all,

quick question here. My daughter has just bought an external HD for use with her laptop but she is having bother understanding something about it, and unfortunately I dont know enough about it.

she mainly just wants to use it for storage for music/pictures and her work docs etc. says she has moved over all her music files but the new drive has an option to BACK UP or SYNCHRONISE and thats what Im stuck on....whats the difference between them and what would be best to use.

hard trying to figure it out over the phone as she lives in Manchester and I dont

thanks

[Simon]

In the absence of any other ideas, you might find this useful, Baz:

http://www.icts.uct.ac.za/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2451

Sandra is offline at the moment, due to a BT line problem, but hopefully Sam or Rik might be in later with some further help. 

[Rik]

Hi Baz

Usually, backup means copy all files (or changed files) from your internal drive to the external drive, it's a one way process. Synchronise means to compare the files on each and to move the newest version to the drive that doesn't have it, ie it's a two way process.

Backup would generally be the option you want, the external drive will then contain a copy of the current contents of the internal drive.

[Baz]

Thanks guys. its simple when explained to you


So will synchronise add the file to a drive that doesn't have it automagically or can you choose which ones to add and Rik you said it would 'move the newest version' does that mean the file will be moved from say drive 'C' to the external drive so you only have one copy of it over however many drives you have

[Rik]

Synchronise generally means copying the latest version of the file to the drive that doesn't have it. Usually that's based purely on time-stamping, so it can produce some odd issues when the clocks change if you are using FAT rather than NTFS.

Generally, the move will take place from C to the external drive, leaving both drives with the same set of files.

The thing to watch, though is the clock change issue, which changes the 'apparent' time of files on a FAT drive. This can result in them all being transferred to an NTFS volume when you sync, because NTFS stores an absolute time, whilst FAT stores a relative time.