You have a laptop and a desktop, and you want to synchronize your documents so that both computers have the latest versions of all your files. Or you have a Flash memory drive where you keep copies of the files you're working on, and you want to synchronize the contents of the My Documents folder with that. Perhaps you have an external hard drive that you use as a mirror disk, for emergency backup, and you want to ensure that the files it holds are all up to date. These are all common tasks, but Windows provides no easy way to accomplish them.

One way you could try to do this is simply to copy the files from one location to another using drag and drop. This is simple and requires no software that you're unfamiliar with, but it's error prone. It's all too easy to overwrite a file with an older version, losing all the changes you've made. It's also slow, especially when synchronizing files on two computers are connected using a network, because if you try to copy a block of files, Windows will copy all the files you selected, not just those that have changed and need updating.

If you frequently need to synchronize the contents of folders so that they both contain the most up-to-date files, then any of the methods described so far are too much work. They also lack flexibility, and may not be very efficient.

The best solution in this case is to use software specifically created to synchronize the contents of folders. This will be faster, and give you much more control over the process so that you don't waste time copying files you don't want just because they happen to be in the same folder as ones you do.

For most computer synchronization tasks we recommend AllSync. It is one of the most powerful and flexible utility of its type, but it is also easy to use. It has a modern user interface that fits well with Windows, and makes full use of the latest user interface objects such as help balloons.

AllSync offers some safeguards that we believe are unique in this class of product, like the option to take backup copies of every file overwritten during an update, so that they can be recovered in the event of a mistake.

For power users, and those with a need to synchronize or back up to remote computers or web servers, as well as local computers, we recommend AllSync. AllSync is an extremely powerful and versatile tool, though it is still quite easy to use.

AllSync is a powerful backup utility, able to create compressed and (if required) encrypted backups of your files and folders. It can even run in the background, keeping your backups up-to-date while you work.

AllSync can synchronize local folders with any network server, making it a great program for maintaining an exact local copy of your data. Its many configuration options make it a powerful and universal backup tool for both advanced home users and technical professionals.

AllSync can be used to synchronize files or folders across a network and you can use it to create copies of files that can be transferred to another computer across a network, and then used to update the originals when they are transferred back.