AOMEI Backupper Help Guides

How to Run Two-Way Sync with AOMEI Backupper

What is Two-Way Sync?

The Two-Way Sync is a feature that newly added, modified or deleted files in the source directory will be synced to the target directory, and the newly added, modified files or deleted in the target directory also will be synced to the source directory. Simply put, any changes in the source or destination directory will be synced with each other when you run the Two-Way Sync task.

How to run Two-Way Sync in Windows 11/10/8/7 easily

Here are the detailed steps about how to set two-way sync:

1. Click the “Sync” tab on the left side and then select “Two-Way Sync”.

2. You are allowed to customize the task name to help you distinguish it from other sync tasks. The task name is Two-Way Sync by default. Click "Add Folder" to select the folder which you want to sync.

3. Select a destination location to sync the folder to.

4. Click "Start Sync" to launch the syncing process.

Tips:

• While sync is running, you can click an icon in the lower-left corner to set to Shut down/Restart/Hibernate/Sleep PC after sync completion.

• When the sync is running, you can also click the underlined sentence to check the sync process in detail.

5. Please kindly wait for the sync process to complete and then click the "Finish" button.

6. As a result, you can see the source folder’s files are the same as the target folder.

Before two-way sync:

1) Source folder:

2) Target folder:

After two-way sync:

1) Source folder:

2) Target folder:

Tips:

• If there are files with the same name but different sizes on two sides, when you run the Two-Way Sync, these files on the target folder will be overwritten.

• If there are files with the same name but different modified dates on two sides, when you run the Two-Way Sync, the files with a newer date will overwrite the files with an older date.

• When you run the Two-Way Sync task again, the added, changed and deleted data in the source or destination directory will be synced to the other side.

Sync Settings

When creating a new Two-Way Sync task, you will find a "Options" button in the lower-left corner of the interface.

Click the button and it will show "General", "Command" and "Advanced" options.

General

• Comments: Write a note for your task to help you distinguish it from other sync tasks.

• Email notification: In unattended operations, a notification can be emailed containing the result of each sync.

Command

In this option, you can set the pre-command and post-command.

Advanced

• Operation Priority: Please select the operation priority of the task. The higher the priority it is, the faster the task execution speed will be.

• Others: If you need the same name as the Basic Task folder in the destination, you need to tick the box "Automatically create a folder with the same as the task in the target location" before you create the basic sync task. (This option is unticked by default.)

Schedule Sync

Select the “Schedule Sync” option upon which a dialog box will appear. Schedule the required sync task to sync files Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc. Also, Event triggers and USB Plug in can be used as a sync method. Please click here to know more details.

Notes:

• Please don't modify the folder name of the source folder(s) once two-way sync has been set up, otherwise, the sync process can not function properly.

• For a new Two-Way Sync process, if the source file name is the same as one of the destinations which have been synced before, the destination copy will be overwritten. There is no way to keep a different version of a file using the same names.

• The maximum file path of Two-Way Sync is restricted by the maximum path length allowed by the Windows API to 256 characters. So, please check the names of the folders you are going to synchronize and shorten them when it's necessary. AOMEI Backupper can't synchronize folders that have special characters in their names.

• Two-Way Sync supports VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service). This allows to synchronize files that are being used by other programs. However, you need to make sure that the "Volume Shadow Copy" service on your computer is enabled. If some files are in use by other programs exclusively, they are not synchronized.

• If there are some special system files or folders with special security attributes in the source folders, they won't be synchronized and the program will prompt you to skip them.

• If the target path is located on a FAT/FAT 32 partition, any files larger than 4 GB won't be synced to the target path because a single file larger than 4 GB cannot be stored on FAT/FAT 32 partitions.

• The source folder and the target folder cannot have a containment relationship.

• Neither the source folder nor the target folder can select CD files.