Synchronizing files over a network

[NiX]

I'm beginning to feel the pain of manually updating every school file on my home PC after changing them at school on my laptop. Right now I have Hamachi setup to make it go a bit faster, but it's still a pain having to figure out where the same file is on my PC because it's partitioned and my laptop isn't. Any programs that'll hunt down the files for me and update whichever one is labeled as the newest one?

[Samwise]

I'd suggest the free version of my company's product (it's what I used to manage schoolwork done from multiple PCs with different filesystem layouts on each) if it wouldn't make me feel like such a shill.     It's not exactly what you're looking for anyway, though.

I'd say Google up "windows rsync".  You'll probably find some tarted up Windows version of rsync that does more or less what you're looking for.

[NiX]

Most of them aren't very automated. Pretty much I just want to turn on both ends of the program, it look in my "School" folder and see which one was last edited and copy that over to the other computer. Is this a bit much for what's out there?

[Samwise]

I'm pretty certain I've seen stuff like that out there.  Heck, I could write ya a Perl script that could do that much.   

(edit) Here's a big page of links to file syncing tools.  Some of them mention having the ability to run constantly.  Keep in mind also that any tool with a command line interface can be easily set up to run automatically via the Windows Scheduler.

[JoeTF]

I would need something similiar - except workable with nested folders. All sync tools I tested so far were nice and dandy when you had one big folder you kept all your files in, but failed miserably when nested folders were involved.

My problem is that I move my files a lot and sometimes change directory names. I would kill* for a software that could:
-track file movements
-track directory name changes (and movements)
-do not create duplicates

It doesn't have to work online, I need it for backup purposes - for everyday use, I stick to keeping all my files on memstick and moving it around:)


*well, not kill but buy. Which woukd be an achievement - since it would be second piece of software I ever paid for.

[Samwise]

Do you really need to "track" renames if you're just using it for backup purposes?  I'm pretty sure there exists backup software that'll just give you timeslices of your files on demand (with the back-end storage set up in such a way as to eliminate pointless duplication).

If the sync tools you've looked at only cover a single flat directory, they're all crap.  Period.  You should be able to take it as a given that any tool which helps you manage files will work in nested directories.  Anything that doesn't should be discarded immediately.