Looking for ideas - myWork folder - Local and Shared resource

All,

I'm looking for ideas on how to implement this myself or even discover an off-the-shelf solution.

I work from 1 of 3 PCs on any given day. These are physically different machines. Due to the nature of my development environment, I need all my work to reside in the same folder on all the machines so I have a work folder called C:\Work on all 3 PCs.

Monday I use PC_1 and make changes to the C:\Work folder on PC_1. Tuesday I need to use PC_2. I go to PC_1 and upload the entire C:\Work folder to a server share (5 minutes). Then I go back to PC_2 and download the Work folder from the server share to the local filesystem on PC_2 (5 more minutes).

I had considered all 3 PCs instead of using a local resource, to use a network drive like \\server\mySharedWork. That way, all 3 PCs would map say W:\ to \\server\mySharedWork. That way they would all have the same configuration and all 3 would always have access to the most recent development environment.

I had to reject the \\server\mySharedWork solution because I go on the road alot to deploy software to customers, and obviously the network resource is gone. If I were to make a local copy of \\server\mySharedWork then the W:\ is no longer consistent. The local Work folder would have to be somewhere besides W:\.

So, I need a way to have a local folder like C:\myWork that I can use and it should self-synchronize with a network share like \\server\mySharedWork when the shared resource is available, and ignore the shared resource when it is not available.

Sorry for the long-winded post, hope you were able to digest all that.

Any ideas? This can't be the 1st time someone wants to do this.

P.S. I have a local Windows Workgroup, not a Windows Domain.

Dave

Only one system is portable, correct? Is this some company LAN, or is it a home network kind of setup?

2 portable workstations (laptops), 1 desktop. Home network setup, but I use it for work (I work from home).

2 portable workstations!?!?!? Well, strike my first suggestion. I was going to suggest simply having the project folder as a shared folder on the portable, so that it is always with you, but that won't work.

I agree with your original statement that somebody MUST have dealt with this. You can synchronize databases on PDA's on plug-in, surely somebody has done some kind of synchronization for folders on a network, but maybe people just assume that network resources are effectively always available.

It seems like it would be relatively simple to create a program that runs on startup, or periodically, or on some other event, that copied the most up-to-date files from folder A to folders B, C, and etc.

Also, keep in mind my current Work folder is 100MB. I have seen it get to 350MB before, and would like to allow it to grow to the size of a CD (700MB). I suppose it would imply a sophisticated way to update the server share, as opposed to brute-force file copying. Maybe I need something called a "Folder Synchronizer"?

Looks like a bunch of utilities are out there associated with "Folder Synchronization".

Er, did I mention that sometimes I walk from machine to machine making changes to the Work area on each machine's respective C:\Work folder? I suspect these utilities may be hard-pressed to keep up with my unorthodox working habits...

Er,maybe I did not understand correct what you are trying to do, but wouldnt a Source Control solve your problem?

Stephan

Look into Karen's Replicator. It's open source in VB6, so you might be able to make it do what you need, at least as far as keeping the 3 computers in sync. http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

As far as keeping the drive letter the same on all 3 and keeping them in sync, you could try using the SUBST command to keep the files on your C:\Work directory as your W:\ directory. (Or don't specify absolute directories in your programs, so that it won't matter what the name of the directory is.)

Sgt: No, a source control is only appropriate for source code - my work environment contains much more than source code; it contains everything including my client email directories.

Al42: Excelent link to Karen's tools - I am going to try her utility. Thanks also for the SUBST idea - I completely forgot about SUBST. I am not sure, however, how SUBST handles the loss of a network drive connection - I am going to play around with that also.