Best way to Sync two MACs back & forth

S

saraugie

Registered
Hi everyone, thank you for being here You've been a great resource.

I have two MAC pros Intel 4.8 = Desktop at home, laptop for traveling.
Right before traveling I want the laptop to have the latest Safari bookmarks, keychain, documents I have saved since the last update. In other words a mirror of the desktop, with the exception of iTunes library.
When coming off the road, I want to go the other way. From the laptop to the desktop, mirror whatever changes I made.

When I was using brand M XP OS, I knew where 90% of the data files were, and just used a external drive and cut & pasted back and forth. A lot of work, redundant to say the least.
I know there is Firewire target disk-mode and I can eliminate the external drive but since switching to MAC, I pressed the "easy button" and was led to here. ;)
 
This looks liek it might work for you. Equally, if you have .Mac that lets you sync, but for me its massively overpriced at $100/year.
 
I'd go with an external FireWire harddrive as "middle-man" and backup. Your user-shortnames are the same on both machines, I presume? Simply backup (using "synch" as an option rather than overwrite) your whole home folder (which should contain everything you need) to the external drive. Synch with the other computer as well, done. LaCie's SilverKeeper should do it. -> http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/7646

You can, of course, leave out the middle-man harddrive, by using target-mode.

I find 50 bucks still a bit much for something like that. (Although it's probably a good product with an easy interface, there are free alternatives.)
 
Thank you both for your feedback. One of my external HDs is a Lacie, so maybe using their software is the way to go with one of the programs I found on Macupdate.
I really just need a program to inspect the folders on each machine, determine which has the lastest dated updates and copy/delete files to the older folder.
 
it's kind of expensive, but, I use the .Mac services and sync 4 machines currently - they all have my address book, mail, bookmarks, keychains etc. I don't even think about it they are set to sync automatically.
 
Those things are all automatically synched when doing a real backup/sync, anyway. Going through .Mac, in my opinion, is just a hassle. Going through the 'net is much slower, of course, and if we're talking a couple of GB of data, it's simply a no-go. SilverKeeper (and other free backup tools that I don't remember) are the way to go here. By the way: I've been using it for years. Never had a LaCie drive myself. It's not in any way "locked" to their drives. :)
 
If I just cut and pasted
Safari Bookmarks : ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist
Mailboxes and mail settings : ~/Library/Mail & ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
From one machine to the other, would this accompish the same thing>?
Is .plist extension the data files on all the applications? Would copying these be an option?

OR:

It seems to me that by connecting my two MACs with Firewire target disc mode, I can just copy entire folders from one library to the other.

For MAIL, for instance, I would just copy the entire MAIL folder and replace the machine's folder that I wish to update, : ~/Library/Mail Does this sound correct?

Please excuse of I am making newbie mistakes...but that is what I am!
 
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