Real Time Synchronization will monitor folders for changes and copy new or modified files with a very short delay after the change has occurred. Because the folders are monitored, they don’t have to be scanned – the “Building File List” step does not occur. Real Time Synchronization can be very convenient and speeds up the synchronization process considerably. However, it will only copy new and modified files and it may not be appropriate in all situations.
Real Time Synchronization is chosen in each profile, on the right-most tab sheet among the Schedule settings. The scheduler must be started in a separate step to start the monitoring.
Because Real-Time Scheduling does not compare the source and destination folders completely, it is recommended to also schedule a complete profile run, for example once a day. This can be done on the “Schedule” tab sheet.
Prerequisites and Limitations
This feature relies on real-time change notifications that it receives from the operating system. Therefore, it works only when the storage that you are copying from fully supports such change notifications. For example, local hard drives are usually fully supported. Most file systems also send change notifications over the LAN. But many NAS devices do not send change notifications properly. And sometimes even if the notifications are sent, the operating system may ignore them (such as Mac OS). In addition, change notifications are not sent by servers using an Internet Protocol such as FTP, SSH, WebDAV etc.
However, Syncovery 9 can now regularly check Internet based folders for changes. This works best with cloud storages that use a changes-based listing method: Google Drive, Sharepoint, OneDrive, DropBox, and Box. On other storages, Syncovery can check the base folder for changes regularly, and scan subfolders if they have new modification timestamps. However, most servers will not update folder modification timestamps correctly across the whole hierarchy, so that a regular full scan would still be necessary. To avoid this, Syncovery itself can ensure that parent folder timestamps are updated when it uploads to an Internet server. It will do so in real-time two-way profiles, or if the option “Touch parent folders” is chosen on the Folders tab sheet in the profile. This technique might not work with some types of servers (such as FTP, Amazon S3, Azure – but SFTP is fine).
The new behavior can be chosen on the Real-Time Settings dialog, on the new tab sheet “Internet Folders (Polling for Changes)”. The new features are also available as separate options, when you scroll down on the “Folders” and “File Age and Size” tab sheets.
When you see that real-time events are not received and the copying is not triggered as expected, you need to switch to regular synchronization, such as every 5 minutes.
Combining Real-Time Monitoring With a Time Window
You can also combine real-time synchronization with a time window.
Syncovery can monitor the folders for changes all day long but do the copying only within the specified time window. To take advantage of this functionality the following settings need to be combined:
- Schedule: no schedule on the Schedule tab sheet
- Real Time Sync selected on the Monitoring/Realtime tab sheet
- Real Time Settings:
- the checkbox “Run profile entirely once” must be deselected
- “Process Complete Folders” must be chosen (on Windows only)
- Weekdays and Time Window:
Specify the time window when it should do the copying.