This is an important consideration for a couple of reasons. You must tell Windows Vista which folders you want to synchronize, and then anything in that folder will be kept in sync. Is it all in one folder, or is it scattered all over your hard drive in various folders? The reason why this is important is because synchronization is folder based. The next thing that you will want to pay attention to is where the data that you do want to replicate is stored. It is important to make note of what data you do not want to replicate, and the location of that data. My point is that you probably have at least some data stored on your source machine that you do not want to replicate to your destination machine. Someone else in my shoes would probably want to leave the movies, music, and photos behind so that they could ensure that they have plenty of free disk space on their laptop. I typically like to take some of these along with me when I travel, but they do take up a lot of space on my hard drive. For example, I have a bunch of digital photographs, music, and home movies stored on my source computer. The first thing that you must consider is whether all of your data needs to be synchronized or if some of it should remain solely on the source machine. With that in mind, I recommend taking a look at the data that is stored on your source machine. For the remainder of this article, I will refer to the desktop as the source machine and the laptop as the destination machine. As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of different ways that you can use the Sync Center to establish and manage synchronization relationships, but I am focusing on one specific task synchronizing data between a desktop and a laptop. That pretty much does it for the prerequisites, but it may behoove you to do some planning prior to synchronizing the machines. Although it probably sounds obvious, another prerequisite is that both machines must be connected to the network, and you must be able to log into both machines. You cannot mix Windows Vista and Windows XP for Sync Center based synchronizations. For starters, both computers must be running Windows Vista. That being the case, I am going to focus the rest of this article on the situation that I described earlier in which data needs to be synchronized between a desktop PC and a laptop.īefore you can actually synchronize your files, you must meet a couple of prerequisites. There are way too many different ways that the Sync Center can be used to cover all of them in a single article. The Sync Center allows you to define synchronization relationships, schedule synchronizations, perform manual syncs, abort a sync, or view the current synchronization status. It allows you to manage the synchronization relationships between a group of PCs, a PC and a server, or even a PC and a mobile device (such as a PDA). As you can see, I have data scattered among multiple devices and until now there has not been an easy way of keeping this data synchronized so that there is a consistent experience from device to device. However, I also have data stored on my Pocket PC based cell phone and on my Creative Zen Vision. For example, I already mentioned that I have data stored on a file server and on my laptop. The reason why Microsoft created the Sync Center is because users often store data in multiple locations. The good news is that Windows Vista has a new feature called the Sync Center that can make this problem go away. Inevitable, I always seem to forget this part of the process, and have lost several articles as a result. It’s nice to have access to all of my files while I am on the road, but I have to remember exactly what I worked on while I was on the road so that I can copy any new or modified files to my file server when I get home. I tend to get a little paranoid, so this usually means that I end up copying everything that I have ever written, all of my business records, and who knows what else. Since I don’t have a VPN set up to my home network, I have to copy any files that I think I might need to my laptop before leaving for a trip. I store my articles on a file server, and all of my e-mail resides on an Exchange Server. When I am at home, I do all of my work on a desktop machine. The problem is that when I am not traveling, my laptop stays in the closet. Because of various editorial deadlines, I usually end up taking my laptop with me whenever I travel so that I can get some work done while I am on the road. Although I can honestly say that I enjoy life on the road, there is one particular aspect of traveling that has always frustrated me. As a freelance technical writer, I find myself traveling a lot to various training classes, trade shows, etc.
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