Expert Settings
Expert Settings
FreeFileSync User Manual:
Quick Start
Command Line
Comparison Settings
Daylight Saving Time
Exclude Files
Expert Settings
External Applications
Macros
Performance
RealTimeSync
RTS: Run as Service
Schedule Batch Jobs
Synchronization Settings
(S)FTP Setup
Tips and Tricks
Variable Drive Letters
Versioning
Volume Shadow Copy
FreeFileSync has a number of special-purpose settings that can only be accessed by manually opening the global configuration file GlobalSettings.xml. Note that this file is read once when FreeFileSync starts and saved again on exit. Therefore, you should apply manual changes only while FreeFileSync is not running. For the portable FreeFileSync variant the file is found in the installation folder, for local installations go to:
<**FileTimeTolerance** Seconds="2"/>
<**RunWithBackgroundPriority** Enabled="false"/>
<**LockDirectoriesDuringSync** Enabled="true"/>
<**VerifyCopiedFiles** Enabled="false"/>
Contents of GlobalSettings.xml
FileTimeTolerance:
By default file modification times are allowed to have a 2 second difference while still being considered equal. This is required by FAT/FAT32 file systems which store file times only with a 2-second precision. RunWithBackgroundPriority:
While synchronization is running, other applications that are accessing the same data locations may experience a noticeable slowdown. Enable this setting to lower FreeFileSync's file access priority at the cost of a slower synchronization speed. LockDirectoriesDuringSync:
In order to prevent multiple synchronization tasks from reading and writing the same files, FreeFileSync instances are serialized with lock files (sync.ffs _ lock). The lock files are only recognized by FreeFileSync and make sure that at most, a single synchronization is running against a certain folder at a time while other instances are queued to wait. This ensures that only consistent sets of files are subject to synchronization. The primary use case are network synchronization scenarios where multiple users run FreeFileSync concurrently against a shared network folder. VerifyCopiedFiles:
If active, FreeFileSync will binary-compare source and target files after copying and report verification errors. Note that this may double file copy times and is no guarantee that data has not already been corrupted prior to copying. Additionally, corruption may be hidden by deceptively reading valid data from various buffers in the application and hardware stack: ↓↓↓ Does the CopyFile function verify that the data reached its final destination successfully? ↑↑↑
Expert Settings
FreeFileSync has a number of special-purpose settings that can only be accessed by manually opening the global configuration file GlobalSettings.xml. Note that this file is read once when FreeFileSync starts and saved again on exit. Therefore, you should apply manual changes only while FreeFileSync is not running. For the portable FreeFileSync variant the file is found in the installation folder, for local installations go to:
| Windows: | %AppData% \ FreeFileSync | |
| Linux: | ~/.config/FreeFileSync | |
| macOS: | ~/Library/Application Support/FreeFileSync |
By default file modification times are allowed to have a 2 second difference while still being considered equal. This is required by FAT/FAT32 file systems which store file times only with a 2-second precision. RunWithBackgroundPriority:
While synchronization is running, other applications that are accessing the same data locations may experience a noticeable slowdown. Enable this setting to lower FreeFileSync's file access priority at the cost of a slower synchronization speed. LockDirectoriesDuringSync:
In order to prevent multiple synchronization tasks from reading and writing the same files, FreeFileSync instances are serialized with lock files (sync.ffs _ lock). The lock files are only recognized by FreeFileSync and make sure that at most, a single synchronization is running against a certain folder at a time while other instances are queued to wait. This ensures that only consistent sets of files are subject to synchronization. The primary use case are network synchronization scenarios where multiple users run FreeFileSync concurrently against a shared network folder. VerifyCopiedFiles:
If active, FreeFileSync will binary-compare source and target files after copying and report verification errors. Note that this may double file copy times and is no guarantee that data has not already been corrupted prior to copying. Additionally, corruption may be hidden by deceptively reading valid data from various buffers in the application and hardware stack: ↓↓↓ Does the CopyFile function verify that the data reached its final destination successfully? ↑↑↑