In Sync

Thanks to digital cameras, MP3 players, and smartphones with HD video capabilities, users can easily fill up their terabyte-sized mass storage devices. The stored data often includes irreplaceable material, such as photos from birthday parties or holiday videos. Thus, it becomes even more important to back up your data so that it's not lost if the hard drive fails. Traditional backup solutions, however, are often cumbersome to operate and can overwhelm home users with a wealth of functions they don't need. This is where FreeFileSync [1], which is aimed specifically at private users, comes in.

First Use

Most common distributions have FreeFileSync in their repositories, and you can usually install it easily using a package manager such as Synaptic or YaST. However, if the current latest version (6.13) is important to you, you will need to download it from the project website. There, the developers provide both customized tarballs for some large distributions as well as the source code for a manual build [2].

After successful installation, FreeFileSync appears in the menu structure with a starter, which you can click for easy access. The intuitively designed program window will catch your eye when you first start it. The menubar is in the header with the toolbar underneath. The two buttons Compare and Synchronize particularly stand out; the cogwheel buttons next to them can be used to access the corresponding settings. A routine for creating filter criteria is hiding behind the button with a funnel icon. The software also has a small statistics display at the bottom right. The main window with its three panes displays the directories to be synchronized and a checklist.

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