Pogoplug to Pogoplug Active Copy - Summary

The ability to run an Active Copy from one device to another is one of the main components of the March 2010 firmware/software release. What it does is allow you to automatically copy files from one hard drive plugged into your Pogoplug to another, in essence allowing you to create redundant backups either within your local network or to an offsite drive attached to a Pogoplug in your network. It also gives you the ability to copy to a full access share of another Pogoplug user.

 

How it Works

Once you have set it up and enabled it to Active Copy between the source files and the destination files, all the contents of the source directory are copied to a directory of the same name in the destination folder

From them on, so long as "Enabled" is checked, an event handler on the source device starts listening for a change in the files in the source directory (either size or date). An added file is considered a “change” for the purposes of Active Copy – deleting a file is not.

When it detects a change, the operation will be put into the background queue to run and will be prioritized against all the other operations currently scheduled or active on the Pogoplug.

Feature List

• Global start-stop for Active Copy. There is an Enable/ Disable All toggle.
• You can individually start and stop each Active Copy Operation.
• You can create multiple Active Copy sessions to the same destination to different sources (this feature does not exist in Active Copy desktop program
• You can create multiple Active Copy operations from the different destinations to the same source
• Full Access Shares will show up as valid destinations and will take a source copy in the same way as any other source.
  This means that anyone who shares a folder with you and grants you upload access Active Copy can be setup with them even over the Internet.
• Files people share to you will not show up as sources

How to Get Started

The Active Copy Drive to Drive program is accessed via My.Pogoplug.com. Once logged in, click the Active Copy button on the site.

The Action Pane will pop up and then click on Setup Active Copy.

Choose the hard drive you want to copy from.

Then highlight the folder you would like to copy from.

Choose the drive you want to copy to.

Then just click on "OK"

It will load and start running the coping program.

That's it. You have set it up to always copy the contents of the source files whenever new files are added or when a previously copied file(s)date or size changes.

Active Copy over the Internet

You can also use the Active Copy program to copy files  from one Pogoplug to another one over the internet.

To do this you must:

1. Have another Pogoplug that someone has shared a drive or folder to you.
2. They have allowed you full read and write access.
3. You have setup an account on My.Pogoplugged .com
4. Your account must the same email address as the one that was used to initially set you up from the remote Pogoplug.

Once set up, the shared drive will appear in your Active Copy setup window.

Just choose the Shared: drive and the Active Copy program will copy the files over the same way it does for your local files.

Accuracy and Speed

I ran a test to see how fast and accurate the Active Copy program is.

In my test, I set up one folder with 3 MB of data and around 3,000 files.  I started Active Copy on my LAN and did a partion to partion copy.

It took about 3 1/2 minutes to copy everything over. I then checked the destination folder and all files were copied. Nothing was missed.

Although it wasn't extremely fast, it worked perfectly in this test.  Transfer speed is not really an issue because it is something that is desgined to work in the background. It would also depend on whether you are doing any other tasks on the Pogoplug at the time.

I also added some files to the source drive and Active Copy found them and moved them over automatically. It wasn't instantaneous but they did get moved soon enough.

This is a nice feature, as you can now create a redundant backup plan very easily or even create a backup plan to keep files in two completly different locations.

The thing to remember with this is that it is not a sync program, but rather, a copy program.

• If a file is copied to the destination and then deleted at the source it will not be deleted from the destination drive.
• A file will be re-copied over to the destination drive if the source file is redated or its size changes. 
• If you delete a file on the destination drive and not at the source it will be copied over again to the destination drive.

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