ChronoSync | Home-to-Home Sync

ChronoSync

Overview

•

Features

•

FAQ

•

Tips

•

Release Notes



Home-to-Home Sync

A common way to keep two Mac computers synchronized is to set up a Home-to-Home sync. Synchronizing the Home folders will keep all of your files synchronized between your two computers; it will create a mirror image of all of your files. Synchronizing Home-to-Home rather than at root level has its advantages. One important advantage is that a Home-to-Home sync will not copy your System and Applications folders. It is recommended that you install System updates and applications directly onto your computer from an installer rather than copying them via ChronoSync. Some important, hidden files that are needed with the application, for example, may not get copied.

If you have multiple users you can can log into them and set up separate syncs. Contact us for advanced instructions on backing up multiple users.

You can only perform a Home-to-Home sync between the same version of Mac OS X, meaning you must sync Tiger to Tiger but not Tiger to Leopard. Furthermore, you need to make sure that your iApps like iPhoto, iTunes and iCal are the same version. However, you can synchronize certain files, like document files, between any OS that your Mac can copy to. For instance, you can synchronize your Documents between Tiger and Leopard or even Tiger and Windows XP. If you are unsure if you can synchronize a particular scenario, ask us by filling out our support form describing your situation.

Step 1. Install ChronoSync on ONE computer. One misconception that many users have is that they must install ChronoSync on both computers and set up a synchronization document on both computers to perform a sync from one computer to another. Doing this is not necessary and certainly not recommended. ChronoSync has the ability to do bidirectional syncs. This means that one document can analyze the contents of the files for both computers, synchronizing in either direction when necessary. Because of this, ChronoSync needs to be installed on only one computer.

Note: Understanding the concept of Targets is important to simplify the synchronization setup. We oftentimes will refer to the targets as the source and destination targets. In a bidirectional sync, the terms "source" and "destination" do not apply since the sync is in both directions. Instead, we will use the terms "left" and "right" target. You can think of your left target as the computer that has ChronoSync installed on it. The right target, on the other hand, would be the computer that is mounted. For this tip, this assumption will be implied.

Step 2. Mount the other computer. After installing ChronoSync, you need to now mount the second computer. You can do this by using Airport, Ethernet or FireWire. The best and fastest connection is with a FireWire cable using a method called 'Target Disk Mode'.

To do this, connect the two computers with a FireWire cable. To enter into Target Disk Mode, hold the "T" key down while starting up the second computer to be mounted. Once in Target Disk Mode, this computer can be accessed as an external disk drive on the desktop of the first computer. For more information on connecting to another Mac read our tip Connection Methods.

Step 3. Launch ChronoSync. Find ChronoSync in your Applications folder (or wherever it is you installed it) and double-click it to start it up.

The Setup panel showing how it should look when
setting up a Home-to-Home synchronization.

Step 4. Set up your targets. On the Setup panel, choose your targets. This is done by clicking the respective "Choose..." button for each of the targets. This will drop down a file selection sheet for you to choose the respective Home folder. For the left target, choose your home folder. For the right target, select your other computer's hard drive from the list of mounted drives and navigate to "Users/username" to find your home folder. Note: This step assumes you are in Target Disk Mode.

Step 5. Change synchronizing direction. Choose 'Bidirectional' from the Direction popup menu. Bidirectional includes both the "Left-to-Right" and "Right-to-Left" directions. It includes all files in each target and shows the status between the two directions. A bi-directional synchronization is performed by selecting the most 'up-to-date' file between the two targets and making sure that file is synchronized to the other target.

Step 6. Enable Synchronize Deletions. Turning this option on will synchronize files that are deleted in a target. Any item you delete from one target will automatically be deleted from the other

target. To be safe, make sure that "Move to '_Deleted Items' folder" is selected so that all of the deleted items will be moved to this folder in case a mistake was made and an emergency retrieval is needed. It is important to clean this folder out periodically. It can become quite large over time.

Step 7. Special File/Folder Handling. In the Options panel, under "Special File/Folder Handling", uncheck the "Preserve comments" and "Ignore invisibles" checkboxes.

Step 8. Exclude in Analyze panel. Now switch to the Analyze panel. From the Analyze panel, exclude the "Cache" folder, found in the "Library" folder. In some cases, you may want to exclude the "Preferences" folder, too (see below). To do this, highlight the particular folder in the Analyze view and choose "Exclude" from the Actions menu. An exclusion is denoted by an "X" in the status column and means that the file will not be considered during the synchronization process. This is a good time to also exclude any other folders that you don't wish to have synchronized. For example, if you don't wish to synchronize your iPhoto libraries then you would exclude the iPhoto folder located in the Pictures folder. Sometimes there are certain types of files you do
NOT want synchronized. An example would be if you use different email accounts on both computers. In such a case, you would not want your email messages synchronized. If you need to know the location of any special data files, such as your email mailboxes, contact us for help. The "Preferences" folder contains the Preferences of most of the applications that you use. These preferences are oftentimes custom information and may be dependent on the type of computer the application is being run. If you set your application preferences differently on both Macs, then you should exclude this folder. If you set your application preferences the same on both Macs, then you should do nothing and include this folder. If you wish, you can even exclude individual preferences inside the Preference folder. The Preferences folder is located under Users/Home(your user)/Library/Preferences The "Caches" folder is recommended for exclusion because it will contain files specific to that computer. Oftentimes the "Cache" folder will be quite large, so excluding it has another advantage - it cuts down on synchronization time! The Caches folder is located under Users/Home(your user)/Library/Caches

Step 9. Save the synchronizer document. One of the greatest advantages of ChronoSync is the usage of documents. Just like a word processing document, a ChronoSync document can be saved as a double-clickable document. Once you set up a synchronization, all the information that you specified in the document will be saved - even synchronizer options!

Always run every sync from the same ChronoSync document. This document not only stores all your settings, but it also keeps track of changes between every sync. That is how ChronoSync always knows what has changed since the last synchronization.

Step 10. Run the Home-to-Home synchronization. Once you have all the above-mentioned settings in place, perform the synchronization. This can be done by choosing the "Synchronize" icon in the toolbar.

That's it!

Once you have ChronoSync installed and set up, synchronizing becomes a simple process! You can automate the process even more by scheduling your synchronizations! If you have any problems while using our products, contact us by using our support form. If you wish to share a tip with us, post it on our comment form. Happy Syncing!

Back to Tips Index