Offline Folders for Synchronised Media Backup and Storage... Doable???

philzgr8 · **1st February 2007, 02:51 PM**

I have an interesting concept that I might implement for keeping a synchronised backup of my media files and I thought it would be worth describing it here in case anyone else has tried it or has any comments on how it might or might not work. For some time I have had two copies of all of my media files (excluding recorded TV which I'm not interested in replicating) and I've looked at plenty of options for keeping them in sync. The problem being that most of the automated tools I've tried have one problem or another or are too expensive. It occurred to me that if I can find a way to relocate the offline files folder on my MCE box to a larger volume I should be able to kill two birds with one stone. The truth is that the Win2K resource kit contains a tool called cachemov.exe which does just that. The tool can also be downloaded from the link below. The advantage of this method is that effectively my main PC will act as a file server to my MCE box even though it is not always online and maintaining content can be achieved in the one location. This also means that if something catastrophic should happen to one of my machines I still have a backup copy. I'm well aware that it's not a flawless backup styrategy but in conjunction with Mirrored raid I must say it seems it would give me pretty much the level of protection I am comfortable with for this content. Has anyone else implemented anything like this? Are there any pitfalls I haven't considered?

http://www.computerperformance.co.uk...e.htm#CacheMov

logifuse · **1st February 2007, 03:13 PM**

I haven't done it with MCE, but I have a customer who syncs 40GB up with a number of laptops to a file server & it hasn't exactly been reliable (as you'd expect, but hey, they can't be told

). I suspect the problems are more to do with numbers of files & not file sizes, but they do have some over 1GB. BTW, offline files does have a file path length limitation (despite what you might read) - make sure you stay less than 200 characters deep.

As an alternative I'd think about running something like QuickMirror as a scheduled task: http://www.quickmirror.com - it's light & there's not much to go wrong. 1 location really need to be the "master" though.

Justin

philzgr8 · **1st February 2007, 03:24 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by logifuse

I haven't done it with MCE, but I have a customer who syncs 40GB up with a number of laptops to a file server & it hasn't exactly been reliable (as you'd expect, but hey, they can't be told

). I suspect the problems are more to do with numbers of files & not file sizes, but they do have some over 1GB. BTW, offline files does have a file path length limitation (despite what you might read) - make sure you stay less than 200 characters deep.

As an alternative I'd think about running something like QuickMirror as a scheduled task: http://www.quickmirror.com - it's light & there's not much to go wrong. 1 location really need to be the "master" though.

Thanks Justin, I have used offline files before but haven't seen the problems you're talking about. In any case I don't expect I will be synchronising huge volumes once the initial synch is complete. The only problems I've had in the past were when you try to synch certain types of data like MS Access files which it really does not like. The fact is that I have found almost every synch tool available to either have accuracy problems or to not support the type of flexibility and automation I would be prepared to pay for.

logifuse · **1st February 2007, 03:38 PM**

Yeah, I think you'll be pretty safe with the minimum number of file types & the fact that you probably won't have to deal with modification clashes. Also, you probably won't be offline all that much. If you manage to move the cache (might have to modify the group policy to allow a higher percentage of drive space used too), then you should be in business.

Justin

philzgr8 · **2nd February 2007, 07:32 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by logifuse

Yeah, I think you'll be pretty safe with the minimum number of file types & the fact that you probably won't have to deal with modification clashes. Also, you probably won't be offline all that much. If you manage to move the cache (might have to modify the group policy to allow a higher percentage of drive space used too), then you should be in business.

Thanks for that bit of info. I wasn't aware that a Group Policy would need to be modified. When I get some time I'll give it a go and I'll post back how it goes.

logifuse · **2nd February 2007, 03:32 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by philzgr8

Thanks for that bit of info. I wasn't aware that a Group Policy would need to be modified. When I get some time I'll give it a go and I'll post back how it goes.

You might not need to edit the GP, but keep it in mind if you do run in to any issues. If the CSC is in the default location, XP should automatically ignore the hard drive % limit listed & just use as much as it needs, but that might be different if you relocate it.

Also, fast user switching has to be disabled to run offline files - does that have any impact on MCE?

Justin