Syncronizing Collection Between Two Computers

[StuDentBR]

Well I use launchbox at two diferent PCs  a notebook which i can run most of emulators, and a desktop which i can run the emulators plus all currently PC Games and i am always improving my collection by adding more and more games and usually i do it on my notebook (external HD), and i want to sync all my plataforms except the Windows plataform, can i copy all the files the from my launchbox drive to another drive execpet the file "windows"  under: Launchbox\data\plataform\windows ? could this work ?

Ps. I keep everything roms and isos inside the Launchbox folder and i already copied the whole folder to the desktop HD the first time and it worked well, now what i want to do is to copy everything again so it can update all the plataforms except the Windows Plataform.

[SentaiBrad]

LaunchBox uses relative paths if you keep all of the content in the LB folder, or even on the same drive, so as long as the folder structure stays the same, then yes you can just move LB across PC's. If there is an absolute path for something (Relative looks like this ../LaunchBox/ for example and absolute has a drive letter on it), then you'll need to edit the appropriate XML with Notepad++ to fix the drive letter or paths. If it is an absolute path, but the drive letter isn't changing from PC to PC, then keeping the folder structure the same still applies as well.

[StuDentBR]

1 hour ago, SentaiBrad said:

LaunchBox uses relative paths if you keep all of the content in the LB folder, or even on the same drive, so as long as the folder structure stays the same, then yes you can just move LB across PC's. If there is an absolute path for something (Relative looks like this ../LaunchBox/ for example and absolute has a drive letter on it), then you'll need to edit the appropriate XML with Notepad++ to fix the drive letter or paths. If it is an absolute path, but the drive letter isn't changing from PC to PC, then keeping the folder structure the same still applies as well.

Yes Brad i know it will work, i already copied once, but after that, i've added some games at one PC,  now i want to sync (copy again) all my plataforms except "windows" (PC Games)  plataform, and i want to know how to do it.

Edited November 19, 2016 by StuDentBR

[ckp]

You can use robocopy.exe which is included with all Windows versions. It's like an advanced copy command and has the option to mirror or copy changes from source path to destination path.

There are also options to exclude certain folders or files or file types.

For example if you wanted to copy the stuff that is in the external hard drive but not in the desktop HDD, you could use a command like this:

robocopy U:\Launchbox C:\Launchbox /mir

so this command would make c:\Launchbox have exactly what U:\Launchbox has. If c:\Launchbox has a lot of the same folders and files, it will just copy over the stuff that does not exist on c:\Launchbox. be careful because the /mir will also delete anything in c:\Launchbox that is not in the source u:\Launchbox. if you don't want the two folder exactly the same and just want to copy the stuff that c:\Launchbox doesn't have but not delete anything that isn't in u:\Launchbox, you can use other command options like /e instead of /mir and some other options along with that. just run robocopy /? to see all the options including how to exclude certain things. i always use the /r option so it doesn't get hung up forever retrying a file copy in case there is something weird about it causing it to fail, so i would use:  /mir /r:1 (more retries are best if copying files over the network, but not with two locally attached drives). there are some other options you might like too so check out what options there are.

robocopy is a great command that will quickly sync up two folders. 

[ckp]

An example more specific to what you stated might look like this, which would exclude the Games\Windows folder inside Launchbox:

robocopy U:\Launchbox C:\Launchbox /mir /r:1 /XD "u:\launchbox\games\windows"

OR (the command below will copy over the missing files and folders but not delete anything that isn't in the source folder)

robocopy U:\Launchbox C:\Launchbox /e /r:1 /XD "u:\launchbox\games\windows"

if you want to exclude more than one folder, you just add each folder path separated with a space like this:

robocopy U:\Launchbox C:\Launchbox /e /r:1 /XD "u:\launchbox\games\windows" "u:\launchbox\images\cache"

 

Edited November 21, 2016 by ckp

[timekills]

Robocopy works well, if you don't mind the command line interface.

I recommend SyncBack. The free version works very well, and would be perfect for your situation. Works over network shares or locally, has a GUI to make life easier, and can either overwrite based on file date, rename, delete, etc.

http://www.2brightsparks.com/download-syncbackfree.html



Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[thefritz11]

So wanted to throw another wrench in the works on this and see if you folks much smarter than me have any suggestions. I'm setting up a NO FILLER machine and want to have it mirrored on my desktop in my office and the HTPC upstairs on the big screen. I want everything synched and have that end covered with Goodsync and roms and such sync up great. However, I use "bezels' or more accurately I guess overlays for all the systems and many of them I have to "tweak" the x/y axis of similar to get the playing area to fall in the bezel correctly. However those tweaks are different based on which monitor/resolution I'm using. Any thoughts? Assuming there are a few files I could not sync and solve the issue but unsure which it would be. Thus far I'm only using Retroarch and Dolphin. Thanks in advance.

 

[thefritz11]

On 8/3/2021 at 11:52 AM, thefritz11 said:

So wanted to throw another wrench in the works on this and see if you folks much smarter than me have any suggestions. I'm setting up a NO FILLER machine and want to have it mirrored on my desktop in my office and the HTPC upstairs on the big screen. I want everything synched and have that end covered with Goodsync and roms and such sync up great. However, I use "bezels' or more accurately I guess overlays for all the systems and many of them I have to "tweak" the x/y axis of similar to get the playing area to fall in the bezel correctly. However those tweaks are different based on which monitor/resolution I'm using. Any thoughts? Assuming there are a few files I could not sync and solve the issue but unsure which it would be. Thus far I'm only using Retroarch and Dolphin. Thanks in advance.

TTT anyone have any input on this one or have I created a problem that shouldn't exist?

 

 

[thefritz11]

One more try here but anyone figure out which files should and shouldn't be synced? Running a desktop and HTPC on big screen setup that are synched with Synchyback but have been getting settings.xml corruption issues and I wonder if that is why.