It is not often that I find it important to write any warnings, but I started to use the program PureSync (version 2.8.1)  from Jumping Bytes Software. At first it seemed as a really good idea. The free version could react on file changed and push a new copy to a “sync dir” and it even could delay deletions for a while to be able to access a file which should not have been deleted for a while.

But I guess when things are too good to be true then that is exactly what they are – too good to be true. I found that files were corrupted on copy. At first I thought I was wrong – the date and file size was all right, but the files could not be read. This happened on large files and  by far not for all files.

I contacted Jumping Bytes and they are not understanding why it can happen as they use a standard file copy API in Windows. Now I truly believe them and can feel their frustration they must feel, but lots of my files were corrupted. TotalCommander (good old friend) helped me fix this by using binary compare – I almost could have copied them all again.

Before contacting Jumping Bytes I did a test to verify the size of the problem and here is what I wrote them:

I copied the same 61 files to the local disk (c:\temp\) and this time
I get 11 errors (Explore and Binary compare agree). On local disk I
then did a “Synchronize Selected files” to Folder 2 of the 11 failing
and this time the binary compare gives me 5 failing. This time I do
the same with the 5 and I get 2 failing. Next time 1 🙁

Today it is 3 weeks since I contacted Jumping Bytes and there is no update on the issue. I’ve deinstalled PureSync and I guess I’ll be a bit more careful about what I use next time.