Synchronize folders between XP Pro and XP Home?

Hello all,

I've got what seems like a pretty simple thing that I want to do and
I'm not finding any obvious way to do it.

I have a home network with two XP Pro machines and two XP Home
machines. What I would like to do is set them up so the "Shared
Pictures" folder on each one of them is synchronized with all the
others... in other words, if one of us cleans off our camera's memory
card and dumps a bunch of pics to our laptop, I'd like those pictures
to propogate throughout our LAN automatically. Further, if I then
edit one of those photos on my desktop, I'd like the updated version
to replace the old version throughout the network. (Reason being that
my wife and I have our own laptops that we download pictures onto,
then I've got a desktop that I do most of my photo retouching on, then
we've got a media server that we dump everything onto in the end...
it's a big pain in the butt keeping everything organized manually.)

Possible? It seems very simple - link the folders together somehow
and tell Windows to just keep them all the same based on every file's
date stamp. But from what I'm reading, Windows doesn't think it's so
simple. I've looked at the offline files feature and it doesn't work
with XP Home, but even if it did, it seems to treat one PC as a server
with the others connected to it as user machines. That's not what I
want; I want two-way synchronization based on the date stamp on a
file.

Is there any way to do this in Windows, or do I need some sort of
separate utility? (And if so, any recommendations?)

Thanks,

// Jeff Williams
//

Jeff Williams wrote:
Hello all,

I've got what seems like a pretty simple thing that I want to do and
I'm not finding any obvious way to do it.

I have a home network with two XP Pro machines and two XP Home
machines. What I would like to do is set them up so the "Shared
Pictures" folder on each one of them is synchronized with all the
others... in other words, if one of us cleans off our camera's memory
card and dumps a bunch of pics to our laptop, I'd like those pictures
to propogate throughout our LAN automatically. Further, if I then
edit one of those photos on my desktop, I'd like the updated version
to replace the old version throughout the network. (Reason being that
my wife and I have our own laptops that we download pictures onto,
then I've got a desktop that I do most of my photo retouching on, then
we've got a media server that we dump everything onto in the end...
it's a big pain in the butt keeping everything organized manually.)

Possible? It seems very simple - link the folders together somehow
and tell Windows to just keep them all the same based on every file's
date stamp. But from what I'm reading, Windows doesn't think it's so
simple. I've looked at the offline files feature and it doesn't work
with XP Home, but even if it did, it seems to treat one PC as a server
with the others connected to it as user machines. That's not what I
want; I want two-way synchronization based on the date stamp on a
file.

Is there any way to do this in Windows, or do I need some sort of
separate utility? (And if so, any recommendations?)

Thanks,

// Jeff Williams
//

I know you say you want synchronization, but I think you'd be a lot better
off with something acting as a server. You can use any of your PCs as an
ersatz server if you store all data on it and point all workstations at it
(mapped drive, UNC path, etc). That way, you can back up all data from one
PC only.

Offline Files can be fraught with problems, and XP Home doesn't support it
at all. You might also look at www.centered.com for another option, but I
think you're going to run into problems with conflicts/overwrites if they
all sync to the same shared location.