Article

Linksys Gets Back Into SMB Networking  | SmallNetBuilder

From the horse’s mouth

Linksys

Press Release

Product Pages

SMB switches

LRT-214 VPN endpoint router

LRT-224 Dual-WAN VPN endpoint router

My Comments

Linksys are returning to the small-business field with a range of unmanaged switches and two VPN-endpoint broadband routers that are pitched at this user class.

All of the equipment works with Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and some of the switches provide 802.3at Power-Over-Ethernet power to half of their ports. For that matter, the cheapest switch in the bunch which is a 5-port Gigabit Ethernet switch calls for US$50. Here, they would also appeal as another quality option to contractors who are wiring a house for Ethernet.when they want a highly-reliable Ethernet switch as the central switch.

As for the routers, these support VPN endpoint along with 802.1q VLAN functionality and are IPv6 ready. As for this functionality, they would support PPTP and IPSec protocols for box-to-box and client-to-box VPN work along with OpenVPN protocols for client-to-box work. They are also future-proof in the context that they implement Gigabit Ethernet LAN and WAN ports thus making them work with next-generation broadband setups and the more-expensive model offers dual-WAN operation for failover operation or load-balancing.

But who knows how Linksys will return to this market further especially when there are companies like Netgear, Draytek and D-Link keeping this market in their grip as far as small-business network technology is concerned.

The typical media-sharing situations with cloud-based file sharing

Dropbox folder to DLNA-capable TV availability concept

You attended your friend’s wedding and took a lot of choice pictures during the celebrations on that day. Now you import your pictures to your computer, use a media-management program to curate them all and manage them in to a folder tree representing that wedding and sync them to your DLNA-capable NAS for backup and availability on your fantastic smart TV.

But you want to share the images with the lucky couple without supplying a disc, or USB stick or dealing with unwieldy email attachments. You may want to post them on your Facebook or other Social Web presence or photo-share service. Here, you could use a cloud-based file-share service like Box.com or Dropbox to share these pictures so they have access to “original resolution” images to view, print out or take further.

Why “original resolution” images? Some of us want to be able to print out the pictures to put on the mantelpiece. As well, one of these pictures such as the one of the couple having the “obligatory kiss” as part of the wedding may be worth printing as a larger feature picture that is to be on the wall. Today’s cameras can yield image resolutions that are to a standard fit for printing but you need the high resolution available at the print shop.

Similarly, you may be pushing out visual-merchandising content to your two shops that you own and you want to use Dropbox as a reference point for this material. Then you want this material appearing on the TV screen attached to the DLNA-capable Sony BDP-S390 set up at each of these locations.

Using a cloud-based storage service like Dropbox as a file exchange

Typical this involves you having an account on one of these services, such as Dropbox. The reason I exemplify Dropbox in this article and others on cloud-based file-storage services is because of it being available across all regular-computer and mobile platforms as a native application along with it being available through a Web user interface thus making it suitable as a file exchange.

Dropbox native client view for Windows 8 Desktop

But if you use another cloud-based storage service, make sure that there is an application for your regular-computer platform that integrates this cloud-based storage service with the operating system’s file system as a folder tree. It also must be able to mirror the contents of your storage service’s account on your computer’s main secondary storage such as the hard disk as a way to gain quick access to the contents. As well, the storage service must have a native front-end program for at least the popular desktop and mobile computing platforms.

Then you upload a folder-tree full of the choicest images to your Dropbox and sharing that with the couple and others you want to share it with. Here, you have to know each recipient’s email address so you can send an invite to view the folder full of photos. Of course Dropbox identifies through the email those who already have Dropbox accounts and lets them know that the photos are available in their Dropbox view. But if a person doesn’t have a Dropbox account, they get an email invite to set up an account for free as part of the invitation to view the pictures.

Media contents in Dropbox folder available on DLNA-capable Samsung smart TV

Here, they may want these pictures up on their Smart TV so they can show their family group the pictures that you took. Similarly, you have a Dropbox account and someone shared some of their choices pictures and videos with you. But you want them to be visible on your Smart TV for group viewing whenever you want.

The goal is not to share the entire contents of your Dropbox account to everyone because you may be simply using Dropbox as a data drop-off point for most of your personal and business data such as works-in-progress along with exchanging the media with your friends. Here, most Dropbox front-ends that are implemented by NAS untis typically operate on an “all-or-nothing” approach and don’t readily integrate the DLNA abilities that the typical NAS unit has nowadays.

Creating a DLNA-sharable folder for your Dropbox folder

Here, you could copy the Dropbox tree over to the NAS’s media folder. Some NAS units may allow you to add extra folders to the publicly-sharable mount point that you can share using DLNA. Here, you use the NAS’s Web control panel to add these extra root folders to the DLNA server’s folder list. In this case, you could create and share with your network a “Dropbox-Incoming” folder for this purpose.

In all cases, you need to have SMB/CIFS access to your NAS’s DLNA media directories. This would be achieved if you are already “dumping” media to your NAS and it is a good idea to create a shortcut to this on your operating system’s desktop.

You will need to perform these tasks using a competent file manager which is part of most regular-computer operating systems such as Windows, Apple Macintosh or Linux. Examples of this include Windows Explorer for the Windows environment or Finder for the Apple Macintosh environment. Things may become awkward if you are using a mobile operating environment like iOS or Android.

Manual sync methods

Using the Dropbox native front-end

Dropbox folder copied to DLNA Media folder on NAS

Make sure that you have the shell-integrated Dropbox front-end that you download from Dropbox installed on your regular (desktop or laptop) computer. This effectively integrates your Dropbox folder tree with your operating system’s folder tree and presents itself as though it is a member of Windows Explorer or Macintosh Finder. This includes making a file-by-file “mirror” of you Dropbox account’s directory layout and contents as part of your operating system’s directory tree.

Here, you use Windows Explorer or Macintosh Finder to copy the folders containing the media from Dropbox to your NAS’s DLNA media directory. You are not altering the contents of this folder in the Dropbox account but are copying it out to your NAS.

Do not move the files from the Dropbox folder because if you move them, you effectively delete them from everyone else’s Dropbox view.

In some cases, you may want to selectively copy images and videos from the Dropbox folder to your NAS for viewing on your DLNA media device. This may be important with a large media pool or a directory that contains office documents along with media files.

Using the Dropbox Web page

If you use the Dropbox Webpage to work your files, you download the folder that you want on your NAS as a ZIP file. Here, you right-click the folder (Ctrl-click with an Apple Macintosh that has a single button mouse) and select “Download” to cause the folder to be downloaded to your local hard disk as a ZIP file.

Then you use a file-decompression utility to expand the contents of this ZIP file to your NAS’s DLNA folder and make sure this is under a subfolder of its own in the DLNA folder.

Both these methods may allow you to “boil down” the folders so that you only have on your NAS the media files in that folder. This may involve a bit of hard work by you manually deleting the non-media files like executable programs, documents, PowerPoint presentations and PDF files.

Automatic sync method

Using FreeFileSync, Dropbox’s native front-end and your NAS to take advantage of a media pool

FreeFileSync sync job to automatically synchronise media from Dropbox folder to DLNA folder on NAS

Some of you may set up on Dropbox an improved “media pool” where each of you can contribute photos and videos of a special event, something the lucky couple could do after a wedding for example. Or the proud parents may create a media pool of their best images and videos of their children for the doting relatives and friends to see. This could be something where relatives and friends can have “contribute” rights to so they can pool what the baby had done while in their care.

This could be set up instead of or alongside Facebook’s new photo-pooling feature so as to provide “best-quality” images, to support videos as well as not disenfranchising people who aren’t Facebook Friends of yours.

To do this, you install FreeFileSync on your regular computer which should also have the Dropbox front-end installed. As well, you create a subfolder in your NAS’s media folder accessible by its DLNA media server that represents this media pool. Then you set up up a manual or timed sync job in FreeFileSync which links to the Dropbox folder and the aforementioned subfolder on your NAS’s DLNA media folder.

Ideas to make Dropbox work this way

Your children’s life

As you have children, you will be taking photos of them and want to share some of these photos with your relatives and friends. As well, your relatives and friends take pictures of your children at events they attend or when they have your children in their care. Similarly, when you have their children in your care or attend their events, you end up taking pictures and videos of them.

Here, you could create a shared folder in Dropbox which has all the pictures that you and your relatives or friends copy pictures and videos to concerning your children during these times. Both you and these doting relatives and friends can then see the moments that are important.

That special celebration

One person that I know of used to create a “photo board” for their parties with their guests supplying pictures that they took to appear on this photo board. A Dropbox folder which you share with each of your guests can serve as the digital equivalent of this “photo board”.

For events like weddings where there is the likelihood of many celebrations along the way like the engagement party, bucks’ night and hens’ night, you could create a “master folder” with subfolders for each of the celebrations. This is so you can maintain a master theme for the group of celebrations while you have particular folders representing, for example, the wedding day.

They are in town

Your relatives or friends have come in to town to enjoy your town’s assets and catch up with you. Most likely you establish a Facebook album for the visit, knowing they are on Facebook. But you want them to have access to the higher-grade pictures, perhaps allow them to “pool” their pictures that they took and do more. Similarly, you want them to have these pictures end up on their NAS so they can view them on their DLNA-capable TV or print them out on their printer.

Here, you could create and share a Dropbox folder tree that represents this visit alongside the Facebook or Google+ albums that you set up with them. Then they take their pictures and videos and add them to this folder tree while you shoot your pictures and videos and contribute them to that tree. This could be done for each “phase” of the trip such as specific outings.

In memorium

You can use Dropbox and your DLNA-capable NAS to memorialise a relative or friend who has passed away. Here, you raid your physical photo albums and scan all of the best pictures or go through your digital photo collection and copy pictures of them in to a folder that is shared with contribute rights amongst the family and friends via Dropbox.

The pictures then are shared across Dropbox as a way of creating a group-based memorium of the deceased person

Business promotions

Having your DLNA-capable Smart TVs or Blu-Ray players play media off a DLNA-shared visual merchandising directory on your NAS can become a powerful business tool. Then you use a business-capable cloud service to keep your visual-merchandising material with it being synchronised to the DLNA-shared visual-merchandising directory can permit you to create the content from home or have others like PR teams and commercial artists contribute this content off-site with the goal of this material appearing on your displays.

Here, the sync routine could be set up on a daily or twice-daily basis for your on-site server or office computer so you always have fresh material available and on the screens regularly. This could be performed as a manual task or you could use FreeFileSync to synchronise the promotions folder on Dropbox to your NAS.

Conclusion

The new consumer and business cloud-based file sharing propagated by the likes of Dropbox, SkyDrive and Box.com can be easily integrated in to the DLNA Home Media Network once you use a NAS as your media server and can use a regular computer as part of the equation.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Solwise

Product Page (PL-600AV-SMT-PIGGY AC Passthrough HomePlug AV2 adaptor)

My Comments

Linksys and Zyxel had offered two HomePlug AV2 devices to the North American market that are based on the first generation of this technology. Here, these units don’t implement the multiple-input multiple-output functionality that allows for higher throughput but the current implementations allow for robust HomePlug-based powerline network segments.

Regular readers will know that the HomePlug AV2 technology provides an improvement over the HomePlug AV and AV500 by integrating various abilities that allow for robustness, such as the ability for a HomePlug AV2 node to become its own repeater. This is in addition to it being able to use the safety earth wire along with the power wires to provide for increased signal reliability in the most difficult of operating environments such as commercial or industrial environments or inter-building links.

Solwise have become the first to roll out a HomePlug AV2 setup with the same first-generation implementation for the UK market and the first to show up this product with the UK mains plug. This time it is in the form of a GBP£29.59 “homeplug” with a Gigabit Ethernet socket and a filtered AC passthrough outlet to plug your other appliances into. This means that you don’t forfeit an AC outlet just to run your HomePlug AV2 segment.

What I see of this is that Solwise are validating the HomePlug technology by selling equipment that isn’t ordinary but can do a lot more. They even place their cards on the table by exposing what chipsets these units use so that people can know what runs best for their small network.

Article

Google Fiber Installs In Provo | Broadband News & DSL Reports

My Comments

The work at the coalface has begin for Google Fiber’s deployment in Provo, Utah. In early October, the signing up has begun but yesterday (Tuesday 12 November 2013 (Western Hemisphere)), the work has started on connecting the very customers to this fibre-to-the-premises service.

What I see of this is that the incumbent telephone company and the cable company servicing this town will be squirming because the duopoly that they enjoyed in this town is being lost as a fibre-optic residential Internet service is being rolled out/ This is with a tariff chart being a symmetrical 1 Gbps for US$70 / month, a TV service with this 1 Gbps service for US$50 / month extra and a free 5/1 Mbps service for the installation cost of US$30. It also means that Provo could become a startup and “work-from-home” town due to the 1Gbps upload speeds offered by Google Fiber.

There have to be steps taken to keep the lively competition on foot so that the cost and quality of Internet service doesn’t deteriorate in the towns where competing Internet service exists.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Pure Jongo T6 wireless speaker which is a tabletop wireless speaker capable of operating in an open-frame DLNA-based Wi-Fi network or as a Bluetooth speaker. It can be used as part of a pair of stereo speakers with another T6 or as part of a Jongo multi-speaker setup with music from a DLNA media server, Internet radio stream or content on a smartphone.

There are two smaller varieties of this speaker known as the T2 and T4 which have smaller drivers but the same abilities in positioning and the kind of content available to them. These also are part of the Pure Jongo multi-speaker setup which delivers synchronous audio to multiple speakers using a Wi-Fi network.

Price

The unit itself:

RRP including tax: AUD$599

Accessories

Coloured replacement grilles: AUD$35

Form Factor

Single-piece Wireless Speaker System

Functions

Connections

Speakers

The unit itself

The Pure Jongo T6 is a large speaker system that is directly powered from the AC supply rather than using a wall-wart power adaptor. This unit uses an integrated stereo amplifier which drives two 5” full-range speakers. It can be positioned on its side to work as a mono speaker and can be part of a stereo pair with the sound streamed from the same network.

As for powering the speaker from AC power, the Jongo T6 uses an integrated AC power supply like most boom-boxes. Here, it came with the typical “portable-radio” AC cord rather than one of those “wall-warts” that can be annoying when using power boards or even double power outlets.

Like most of the wireless speakers that are currently on offer, the Pure Jongo T6 implements the “own access point plus Web page” for integrating with a Wi-Fi segment that doesn’t implement WPS one-touch setup. This page also allows you to determine vertical or horizontal placement which affects how the speaker will sound. Of course, you can subsequently manage the Jongo speaker from your smartphone using the Pure Connect app.

Side view with main controls

If you are using the Pure Connect app, you have to look for the distinct P logo which shows that the app has detected the existence of Jongo speakers on the network so you can stream the Internet radio and on-device content through your speaker. Of course, this speaker works hand in glove with other third-party DLNA control-point software making it be part of the DLNA Home Media Network.

There is of course the Bluetooth ability where the speaker can be simply paired to your phone when it is turned on and this device didn’t take long to pair up to my Samsung Android phone as a Bluetooth endpoint. Then it was able to yield smooth streaming performance from the smartphone.

The Jongo T6 does yield a powerful sound that has a good tight bass but there isn’t at times much of the treble response. The Pure Connect app offers a treble and bass control but I assessed it based on the tone controls being kept flat.

As for performance on the home network, it works well in most locations when it comes to picking up the Wi-Fi signal and is reliable with streaming content sent to it using DLNA. It can recover quickly from jitter with Internet radio but, like a lot of these devices, “gives up the ghost” too easily if the connection is congested rather than retrying if it loses touch with the host server.

Rear view with Wi-Fi button

I set up a Jongo multi-speaker arrangement with this speaker and the S3, running the Heart London Internet-radio stream through this setup using the Pure Connect app and both the speakers were working in sync with each other. The speakers responded to my settings on the Pure Connect app after just under a second.

I have run this speaker with my smartphone as a Bluetooth A2DP media device and it was responsive when it came to paring and connecting up with the phone. This echoed the same behaviour that the demonstrator Jongo T6 came through with at the Australian Audio & AV Show 2013.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

I would like to see the Pure Jongo range of products equipped with a “Bluetooth / Wi-Fi” switch which forces them to work either as a Wi-Fi device that is part of the home network or as a Bluetooth speaker. This can work well with “walk-up” usage where someone may play content from their mobile device or laptop on an ad-hoc basis.

Similarly, this range of products could work with the Pure mobile-platform app to implement a Wi-Fi Direct or “own-AP” setup with a smartphone or tablet associated with a 3G service for Internet radio and other Internet services when they are used away from a small network or to set up a multi-speaker arrangement away from a small network. But this can be mitigated through the use of the Bluetooth connection between the mobile device and the speaker for 1-to-1 audio streaming.

Pure could also port their Connect app to the Windows 8 and Macintosh OS X platforms to make it relevant to the increasing number of small notebooks and tablets that run these regular-computing operating systems.

As for the T6, it could be improved through Pure offering a “higher-tier” model that has the tweeter speakers to bring out the best for higher frequencies. The app could also offer a loudness function to allow it to sound at its best at softer volumes.

Conclusion

I would recommend the Pure Jongo T6 by itself as a wireless speaker fit for filling a kitchen or other medium-size area with music or competing in a noisy environment in a similar vein to a larger portable radio.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Pure Jongo A2 Wi-Fi / Bluetooth audio adaptor which connects to one’s favourite stereo system or a pair of active speakers to play content from a computer, network or mobile device. This is achieved through Wi-Fi DLNA technology or through Bluetooth A2DP technology.

It is part of the Pure Jongo ecosystem which has integral support for synchronous playback of network-hosted sources over the same network and is managed via a Pure Connect mobile-platform app for iOS and Android.

Price

The unit itself:

RRP including tax: AUD$199

Accessories

Decorative collars (lime green, mango, burnt orange, white): $29

Form Factor

Adaptor for existing audio and AV systems

Functions

 Connections

 The unit itself

The unit is slightly bigger than a 500g (“pound”) block of butter and is shaped like a triangle with curved sides. There is the ability to style it your way using optional decorative collars available from Pure, but this size also makes you want to take it with you to hook up to any sound system at any location.

This adaptor has digital (coaxial and optical) and analogue audio outputs to suit all consumer audio equipment

For connectivity, the Pure Jongo A2 covers all bases as far as consumer audio and AV equipment is concerned.  Here, you have a pair of RCA connections to provide a line-level audio connection to any vacant auxiliary or tape input on your sound system. If you are using a digital-analogue converter, a home-theatre receiver or a digital amplifier, you can connect this network audio adaptor to this digital inputs on that component using the coaxial (RCA) or optical (Toslink) connections. This lets you use the better digital-analogue signal path offered by these devices as well as obviating the risk of electrical noise in the signal that can come about with longer RCA-cord analogue connections.

When it comes to the home network, you have the ability to connect to an 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi wireless segment. This supports WPS push-button setup or you use the “own access point and Web interface” for integrating this device in to your existing small network.

The Jongo plays properly as a DLNA MediaRenderer device where it can reliably accept a run of audio content that it is directed to play via the home network. I had this playing a run of albums through the household stereo system by “finding” the files on my WD My Book World Edition NAS using Twonky Mobile on my Samsung Android phone and using that app to have it play the tracks.

The Pure Connect app provides the multiple-speaker functionality for content held on your device as well as Internet-radio content hosted through the Pure Internet-radio directory service.

As a Bluetooth A2DP endpoint, the Jongo A2 had played its part very well with my Samsung Note 2 smartphone by running the content streamed to it very smoothly even though the phone was two metres from it.

Other comments

If you do want to make sure that this device works at its best, yielding a clean sound from your existing stereo system, make sure that the Bluetooth output volume for your Bluetooth-capable phone is at 75%. Similarly, bypassing any tone controls on your media player software and adjusting the tone on your stereo equipment’s control surface keeps the setup sounding at its best without the risk of sound that is too much like that pub jukebox.

If you are using a UPnP AV / DLNA media controller or Pure’s Connect app to manage this device, make sure that the output volume is no more than 75%-80%. Personally, I use the volume control on the stereo system to adjust the volume to how I want it to sound at a particular moment.

A teenager who lives with us was very impressed by the fact that the Pure Jongo A2 had “all bases covered” and was not being tied to an Apple-only ideal when it came to audio-equipment connectivity.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

As we see the arrival of other services like Pandora and Spotify, the Pure Jongo system could offer app-level connectivity to these services. This can also be augmented by the use of software for Windows 8.1 and Macintosh OS X so that small notebooks, tablets and similar computers based on these regular-computer operating systems can play along with the Jongo ecosystem.

The Pure Jongo A2 could offer integral Apple AirPlay support for those of us who want all wireless-connectivity bases covered in one box. Similarly, Pure could offer a variant of this device that has the ability to stream audio content from another sound system into the Jongo speakers that are on the network, which could please those of you who work with vinyl or other legacy formats or who want to stream the output of a PA system used by a band, MC, DJ or similar user to other Jongo speakers.

As for network abilities, it could benefit from dual-band Wi-Fi connectivity and / or Ethernet connectivity to avoid the problems that are becoming associated with a crowded 2.4GHz band. The Ethernet functionality could come in to its own due to the fact that it would be used with equipment that is normally kept in one place.

Conclusion

I would see the Pure Jongo A2 as a tool to provide an “open-frame” bridge between your smartphone, tablet or laptop with Bluetooth or your DLNA Home Media Network using Wi-Fi. You also can add Internet radio to this mix using the Pure Connect app’s access to Pure’s Internet-radio directory. Even if you do have an Apple AirPort Express in place for AirPlay connectivity, you are able to effectively have “all bases covered” with this device.

The digital connectivity effectively lets you use the better digital conversion circuitry in your home theatre receiver or digital amplifier in a way that the Apple AirPort Express and a lot of other similarly-priced devices don’t..

You use a regular Windows or Macintosh computer to curate your pictures, music and video files and store these files on your computer’s hard disk. Then you buy a high-capacity network-attached storage device to make these files available on your home network at all times and also as a backup or “offload” measure.

Normally this will require you to use Windows Explorer or Macintosh Finder to copy the files out to the NAS every time you synchronise them out to your NAS. This can be annoying especially if you have made changes to a few of the files or added a handful of files to the collection such as the latest downloaded images or a CD “rip”. Here, you have to answer a file-owerwrite prompt that the operating system puts up every time you write over an existing file as part of a copy process and this can be awkward if you did something like modify your files’ metadata or edited a photo, You could select the “Yes to all” prompts but this runs a slow copy process which transfers redundant data or work through each folder and file manually and find that you hadn’t reflected all the changes you had to reflect..

There is a free open-source application called “FreeFileSync” which automates the process of keeping your files that exist on two locations in sync.  This is available for Windows, Macintosh OS X and Linux and can work with locally-mounted drives or SMB network-shared folders.

Here, you can set up a “there-and-then” sync job or create a sync job affecting certain files and folders on both the source and destination in a particular way. A sync job that you save can affect multiple pairs of files and folders thus avoiding the need to create one job for each folder pair.

Prerequisites

FreeFileSync must be downloaded and installed on your computer

You download FreeFileSync from FOSSHub or Download.CNET.COM and install it as you would for downloaded software for your operating system.

Identify on your computer where your media manager software is storing your music, photos and videos.

Media libraries in Windows 8.1

In iTunes, this is found under the “Advanced” tab in the Preferences menu. Windows Media Player and Windows Live Photo Gallery use the Pictures and Music or “My Pictures” and “My Music” libraries created by Windows. Other media-management tools may use a particular folder that you set in their options or preferences window as the place for their media library.

CD rip location in Windows Media Player

Most audio-based media management tools like iTunes and Windows Media Player typically use the library as their import folder for when you “rip” a CD or purchase music through their online store whereas a lot of photo and video tools may have you create a separate import folder away from your library for images and video you import from your camera or scanner. This then allows you toe edit the images and video before adding it to your library.

Identify and make available the “media” folders that you are using to store your media on your NAS.

A NAS that uses a DLNA media server and an iTunes media server typically references a folder tree like “Media”, “Shared Media”, “Shared Music” or something similar. These are typically at the “Public” SMB mount point and are accessible using SMB/CIFS as well as these media servers.

If your NAS uses one shared media folder, create a sub-folder for the music files, another for the images and home video and another for other video like “download-to-own” content.

Create a media sync job

Setting up FreeFileSync for media syncing

These actions are for a Windows computer and most NAS units

1. Open FreeFileSync
2. Click Program– New
3. For each root folder representing your media collection kinds,
   a) Drag the root folder representing the media type on your computer to the left file list pane
   b) Drag the destination media folder for the media type on your NAS to the right file-list pane
   c) Click the + symbol to add extra media type pairs to your sync list.
4. Click the gear icon next to the Synchronize button to determine the kind of synchronisation to take place
   In this case, you will have to select the “Update” option for this job. This effectively contributes new and modified files and folders that exist on the computer to the NAS without deleting any files that have been removed from the computer’s media folder. This is important if you just keep your files on your regular computer just to curate them before adding them to your media collection, or you “shift” older files to your high-capacity NAS to create space for newer files.
5. Click on the “Update” button to select this option.
6. Click on the “Save As” option to save this sync job as a file. Give it a name like “MediaSync” or “MediaNAS” to reflect the goal of it syncing your media to the NAS.

Manually running this sync job

Here, you open FreeFileSync, select the name of the “media sync” job and click “Synchronize” to start the sync process.

When to run this

Run the :FreeFileSync” job whenever you have done significant work on your media library like importing new media or editing existing media including the metadata. This can also be done as part of a backup routine before you start off the main data backup on your PC.