I'm looking for a file synchronization utility. Currently I'm using SyncToy, which works well most of the time. But on large large folders it get awkwardly slow.

There should be a file share (NAS) and multiple computers synchronize with it. Like a Windows Server.

So this are my requirements:

  • Should be reliable
  • Support of large files (~ 5GB)
  • Support of many files (~200.000)
  • Scheduleable background synchronization
  • File Share (NAS) support
  • Deletion support
  • No server required
  • Must work on windows. Linux and Mac support would be nice.

Could someone point me to a tool?

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  • 1
    I'm assuming this is on windows, right? Suggest you edit your question to make this clear, and/or add appropriate tags. – Phil Hollenback Jul 27 '11 at 18:41
  • What does 'VPN support' mean? If you have access to the network resource, then the tool should work. Or are you expecting the application to have a built-in VPN system. – Zoredache Jul 27 '11 at 19:19
  • Synctoy does fit many of those requirements. You should explicitly list speed in your list of requirements. Also please tell us about what 'large folders' means to you. Is that folders with a large number of files, or folders with a few files that are very large? – Zoredache Jul 27 '11 at 19:21

There is robocopy that comes with windows which does a good job then other one I have used is called Unison and it works on all platforms. The one nice thing you can do with this is set it up so it will automatically sync files that get updated. It can only do it between two locations but have a read though the doco and it will explain better than I can what its limitations is.


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  • robocopy is not an option (see comment on Jmarki's answer). Unison sounds interesting. I'll have a look at it. – Michael Stoll Jul 28 '11 at 10:20
  • Unison does it. – Michael Stoll Aug 1 '11 at 13:13

good pointers in this discussion, although your question is not targeted for backup, we do use rsync for synchronization, although initial setup is little bit of work: Why hasn't rsync caught on in the Windows world?

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  • Despite rsync might work well, I'd prefer a simpler solution. So if the other options fail, I'll try it. – Michael Stoll Jul 28 '11 at 10:48

Have you tried Richcopy, one of the latest incarnation of xcopy from Microsoft?

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  • No, I need support for deletion. Thus when a file gets deleted one one side the sync tool deletes it on the other. – Michael Stoll Jul 28 '11 at 10:13

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