Synchronising your Files

The invention of the computer was a massive step forward in the world of business. Since then people have been working on computers at some point in nearly all types of jobs. Those of us with office based jobs may well work on more than one computer at a time but still working on the same project or document. This can cause a bit of a problem. You work at the office, then you wish to do more at home on your home PC or even do some extra work on the laptop while on train etc. You then have to copy the files you are working on from each computer to the others to keep them updated. This is a tiresome task and can often be frustrating.

The Flash Drive

Also called the pen drive, the flash drive gave an option for this by providing a easy to use transferable disk that as light weight and had 100's of times the capacity of the old faithful floppy disk. The flash drive simply plugs into an available USB port and becomes a removable storage device to whatever computer its attached to at the time. Simple save your work to the flash drive and take it with you where ever you go. The perfect solution for smaller files and projects, with drives going up to around 1Gb of storage space. Flash drives are reasonably priced and provide a good low budget solution. The flash drive is best used for infrequent use between any number of machines. I say infrequent user because I suggest anyone wanting to do this daily may well want a more secure and even easy method than the flash drive. Just wanting to use your laptop now and then or maybe go to another machine for the weekend the flash drive is a great place to start.

Find Flash Drives from 64mb to 1Gb in size

Synchronising your work

If your working on a project, website or similar work you may want a more secure and slightly easier solution to the flash drive. Synchronising involves having a copy of your work on each computer you use. Each time you connect up to each computer you can synchronise the files so that each computer has the latest copy of each file. This way whatever computer you use next it will have the latest copy of your work. Of course for this to work your computers have to be connected together in some capacity from time to time. The synchronisation solution then only becomes viable for networked computers or when using a laptop to work on your travels.

Microsoft windows has two ways synchronising your files. Windows XP professional edition allows automatic synchronising of files when the computers involved are connected together. Windows XP home edition uses the trusty briefcase option (also available on professional edition). Both have advantages and disadvantages to consider. The main point to think about is your level of knowledge on the subject of windows and synchronising. The automatic solution is a better all-round and quicker solution but the briefcase is easier to use and more user friendly for anyone to understand.

My Briefcase

The briefcase feature in windows has been around for a while an has served its purpose well. The briefcase allows you to synchronise your files between two computers. Its best used with one desktop computer as the main computer of the two storing the original files and a laptop computer containing the briefcase.

To create a briefcase on your laptop or secondary computer right click in the folder you wish to create the briefcase (or on the desktop) and go to new and the briefcase. You can then name the briefcase to something a little more appropriate than my briefcase. Once the briefcase is open connect to the primary computer via my network places (if connecting via a network) and drag the files you wish to share into the briefcase. You can now work on the files from the briefcase like any other file on your laptop. You do not have to remain connected to the primary computer any longer. You may also create the briefcase on the main computer and save it to a flash drive or floppy disk. You can then transfer it to the secondary computer and back again to update the files if your not connected to a network.

The next time that you connect the two computers again open the briefcase and select update from the icons under the menu bar. You may select certain files to update or you can update all your files by selecting update all. Both computers will now have the most up to date version of the file you are working on

Automatic Synchronising - Offline files

What Microsoft Widows refers to as offline files is a system similar to that of the briefcase but works in a more automatic way. This unfortunately makes it a little more difficult to set up and maintain than the briefcase option. Offline files requires you to select certain files that you wish to keep synchronised by selecting them on the main computer in the network.

By opening "My Computer" and going to the tools menu, you can open the folder options. From here select offline files from the tab menu's at the top. You are then provided with a number of options to setup your synchronisation options. Enabling the Offline files checkbox will allow you to set up your preferences for synchronisation. Offline files lets you choose exactly how you want to keep your files synchronised. The next two checkboxes are Synchronise all offline files when logging on and then when logging off. Having both of these checked will give you the full synchronisation. The idea is that when a computer is connected to the network that is setup to request offline files it does so automatically. Also when you log off while connected to the network it will update the files you have altered. You do not need to remain connected to the network in order to work on files only to update them to the other computers. This situation is best suited to computers that are sometimes connected to a network but not all ways. A laptop with a wireless connection to a network would be an ideal situation for this system to work well. The option to encrypt the data over the network to keep it secure is there as well as creating a shortcut on your desktop to the offline files.

Setting up folders to be included in Offline Files

To setup the files that you wish to synchronise offline you will need to open the network drive with the files stored on it. once inside the folder select the file menu and go to make available offline. This option will only be available once the steps above have been completed. Your computer will then try to synchronise your files according to the preferences you specified.