Backup your entire computer (Part Two)

If you need to copy or move files from one place to another, Beyond Compare has two types of interfaces. You can try moving your files with either one to see which you find more suitable. The FolderCompareSession is a generalized interface, good for doing many things. The FolderSyncSession is a more specialized interface, intended for doing only folder syncs.

Folder Compare

Let's try it in Folder Compare first. For opening the locations, drag-and-drop is the quickest way. But you could also browse from the file button.

If this is your first time, try a small test folder first. Select it and right click to get some options. Then choose either copy or move. Click, and you are done.

Folder Sync

In Folder Sync it is similar. Click Ctl-T, choose Folder Sync. Open your origin and destination. If you want to go from left to right, choose Copy to Right. Press Synchronize. And you are done.

When you press Copy to Right, Beyond Compare finds files that exist only on the left and it copies those files to the right. For files that have the same name on left and right, it leaves them alone unless one of them is newer or larger on the left, in which case it will copy them.

Options

We could have instead chosen Copy to Left or Copy Both. All of these copy choices are green arrows in the menu.

What about the Mirror Choices. Can you guess why they are red? Mirror will overwrite. Mirror is more risky because everything on the destination gets wiped out in favor of everything on the origin. When the copy is finished, the destination will have been made into an identical copy of the origin.

You only did this on a small test file, right? Good.

There is one important thing to set before you start doing larger file operations. You should set the log to save into a file somewhere. Later, when you need to figure out what happened, the log will be your friend. In the Beyond Compare Menu choose Tools->Options->Tweaks->Log. Set a location to save the log.