Have you ever lost important documents or pictures because your computer crashed? Too many people take the chance of having their files stored in a single location. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use a program called Allway Sync to backup all your important documents and pictures to an external hard drive.
Allway Sync is a free Windows program that can keep folders on your computer synchronized with folders on an external hard drive. For example, you could use Allway Sync to keep the “My Pictures” folder on your computer synchronized with a folder called “Pictures” on your external hard drive so that whenever you modify or add a new picture, it is copied to your backup device. You could do the same for your My Documents, My Music, and My Videos folders.
I should clarify that Allway Sync is free only if you use it moderately for personal use. If you want to backup frequently like once per week (like I do), then you will be asked to purchase the full version for approximately $20.00 US.
Allway Sync can be used to sync files to another hard drive, network drive, or external device. This tutorial is geared towards showing you how to backup to either an external hard drive or USB thumb drive as seen below. You can purchase either from an electronics store like BestBuy or Futureshop or online at TigerDirect.ca
Kingston USB thumb drive
Iomega external hard drive
I recommend that you assign your external storage device a static drive letter. To learn how to do this, check out this article.
STEP 1: DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL ALLWAY SYNC
Visit Allway Sync’s website and click on the “Download” button. Save the file to your Desktop and open it to begin the installation process.
Follow the instructions in the installation Window. The defaults are usually acceptable (IE: don’t change them unless you know what you’re doing).
After installation, a new icon for Allway Sync should appear on your desktop. Double-click that icon to open the program.
STEP 2: RENAME THE DEFAULT JOB
A “Job” is a set of two folders that will be synchornized. One folder is the source folder which is typically on your hard drive. The other, destination folder, is typically on your external backup device.
Job name
Right-click on the default job name and select “Rename Job”. Call the job something that makes sense. In this case, well call the job “Documents” because we are backing up the Documents folder.
STEP 3: SELECT THE SOURCE FOLDER
The source folder contains the files that you want to backup. It can be any folder on your hard drive.
One the left side of the screen, click the “Browse” button and navigate to the source folder . In this case, it’s the “Documents” folder on the ‘D’ drive.
Click the browse button and find the folder to backup
STEP 4: SELECT THE DESTINATION FOLDER
On the right side of the screen, click “Browse” and navigate to the destination folder. In this case, I’ve created a “Documents” folder on my external hard drive. If a folder doesn’t yet exist, you’ll have to create one.
STEP 5: ANALYZE AND SYNCHRONIZE
Click the “Analyze” button to see differences between the source and destination folder. If you’ve just created a folder on the external device, you will get a warning from Allway Sync that there are “substancial differences” between the two folders. It’s okay, you can ignore that warning because we know the two folders are completely different at this point.
Click "Analyze" to see the differences between folders
The first time you backup, you can ignore this warning
Click the “Synchronize” button to copy your files to the external device. You will notice a progress bar moving as the files are copied. You’ll also see a list of the files being copied as the bar progresses.
Wait while the files are copied to the backup device
Once the progress bar has reached 100%, you are finished! Your files have been copied to the external backup device.
Close Allway Sync.
I recommend you make a habit of running Allway Sync at regular intervals. Depending on how critical your data is, you may want to backup once a day, week, month, and so on. Personally, I do it every Sunday.
REPEATED USE OF ALLWAY SYNC
So a week passes and you’ve created some new documents and modified some others. Of course, this work is important and you want to have it backed up.
Open Allway Sync.
If you like, click the “Analyze” button to see what changes will be made. In this example, Allway Sync has detected that there are twelve new files and four changed files:
Click the “Synchronize” button. Allway Sync will copy over the twelve new files and overwrite the four changed files on the external backup device. Since these are small documents, the backup process takes much less time than the first backup. In the log at the bottom it will say “Synchronization Finished” and the progress bar will have reached 100%. At that point, you can close Allway Sync and continue with your work.
***Note*** If you run Allway Sync frequently you will be asked to buy the full version which is about $20.00 US at the time of this writing. You can purchase the full version by clicking the banner below:
—– CAUTION —–
If you delete a file from your hard drive, that same file will be deleted from the external backup device. By default, this also works in reverse. So if you delete a file from the backup device and run Allway Sync, that file will then be deleted from your hard drive and you will be left with zero copies!
Worst case scenario - you lend your backup USB thumb drive to a friend who accidentally delete all your documents. When your friend returns the thumb drive to you, you run Allway Sync and it deletes all the documents from your hard drive as well!
I should say that if ALL the files were deleted from your thumb drive, Allway Sync would give you a warning indicating “substancial differences” between the two folders and you would have to press a “continue” button before proceeding. You must pay attention to the warnings that Allway Sync gives you before you continue with Synchronization.
One way to avoid this is to change the sync direction between locations. To do this, Click on the “Change” link between the two sync arrows.
Click "Change" to change the sync direction
Select the right arrow so that only changes on your hard drive will be replicated to the backup device. Also, check “Propagate deletions” so that if you delete a file from your hard drive, it will be deleted from your backup device as well.
With these settings, if a deletion or modification occurs on the external device, it will not be replicated to your hard drive. Instead, any changes made to the backup device will be overwritten by the contents of your hard drive.
Change The Sync Direction
You shouldn’t alter or add files to your backup device. Instead, it should be used purely as a location where new and modified files can be copied to.
—– END CAUTION —–
CREATING ADDITIONAL JOBS
So far we’ve only covered the use of a single job. Typically, you’ll have several folders on your hard drive that you want to backup. Let’s say you want to backup another folder called “Pictures” that stores all your photographs. To do this, we have to create another job.
To create a new job, click “Job” on the toolbar and then “Add New Job” (or press Ctrl + N).
Click on "Job" and select "Add New Job"
Right click on the new “New Job 1″ tab and select “rename” from the menu. You can name this new job anything you want – “Pictures” would be fitting for this example. You’ll have to select the source and destination folder again.
Click “Browse” on the left side and navigate to the source folder that stores all your pictures. Then create a folder on the external device which will hold your pictures. After that, click “Browse” and navigate to the new folder on your backup device.
Follow step five above to synchronize your pictures to the external backup device.
You now have two jobs, one for your documents and one for your pictures. Note that when you click “Synchronize” it only synchronizes the current job you have selected. If you want to backup both your pictures and documents, you’ll have to select each job individually and click “Synchronize”.
CONCLUSION
I hope you now feel more confident about backing up your important data! Thanks for reading. For further information, please review the FAQ at Allway Sync’s website.
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Tags: allway sync, backup
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