Today’s Question: I’ve adopted GoodSync as my backup solution after reading your article and viewing your video course [on GoodSync]. It works well most of the time, but sometimes I receive an error indicating that the “Sync has finished with Errors or Unresolved Conflicts”. Is this something I should be worried about? Am I doing something wrong?
Tim’s Quick Answer: This is a somewhat common issue, related to changes being made to the drive (such as by the operating system) in the background while GoodSync is running. It is probably not an issue you need to worry about, but it is a good idea to view a list of the errors just to be sure.
More Detail: When a synchronization backup using GoodSync ends with the error message that there were errors or conflicts, you can view a summary of those issues.
Conflicts occur when a file has been changed on both drives. If you’re using the one-way backup option in GoodSync, which is what I recommend, then this should never be an issue. However, it is a good idea to confirm there were no actual conflicts. You can do so by choosing View > Conflicts from the menu to display a list of conflicts for files on the drives being synchronized. Again, for a one-way backup, this won’t be an issue.
Next, you can choose View > Errors from the menu to see a list of errors that occurred during the synchronization process. In most cases these errors will be caused by the operating system doing work in the background. For example, as a Macintosh user, I often see errors related to the Spotlight search feature indexing the drive in the background while a one-way synchronization backup is in progress.
If the only errors on the list are operating system files (not your own photo or data files), then you can ignore this issue. In these types of situations you can generally avoid the errors by either leaving the drives connected to the computer for a few minutes before starting the synchronization backup, or by simply running the backup process again after receiving the error message.
I have never had an error or conflict with GoodSync that represented an actual problem with my drive or data, but I still check the list of conflicts and errors every time I see the message indicated in today’s question. If, however, you see errors or conflicts related to your actual photo or data files, you’ll want to explore the reasons for those errors, and perhaps make another backup to a different drive in the meantime just in case there are problems with your storage devices.
For those interested in learning more about the GoodSync backup software referenced today (and that I use for backing up all of my photos and other important data), you can get details through the GoodSync website here: