Mirror

Mirror provides a quick means of matching the content of two different directories. In other words, it can copy the contents of a folder to a location of your choice, practically creating an identical copy of the source directory in the destination one.

The application runs via the console window, as no standard graphical user interface is available. Thus, it can be easily integrated in batch files and scripts to execute automatic data backups.

As you run Mirror, the help is displayed, explaining how everything works so that you can get familiar with the syntax and all the extra options. And we might say, the application comes with a generous collection of such additional options, grating you full control over its actions.

But first let’s talk about the default behavior of Mirror. The syntax is simple, as you only have to specify the source and the destination directories to begin (the extra options are not mandatory). In doing so, Mirror analyzes the contents of both folders and only copies the files that are new or have been modified with respect to the source. This saves both storage space and time, and makes it perfectly suitable for frequent backups. The content of folders is processed recursively, unless otherwise specified.

Be aware that, in order to make the two folders identical, Mirror is also configured to erase files from the destination directory, in case they are no longer detected in the source folder. This configuration makes it easier to perform backups of files you renamed or moved from the source directory. Note that there is an option to block this action, which can be used to avoid losing files you actually need.

As mentioned before, Mirror features a ton of options that allow you to configure it as you wish. For instance, it can be configured to include or ignore files that match a specific pattern (e.g. file type). When using this option, folders that are supposed to be excluded are completely disregarded, meaning none of their contents are taken into consideration, even if they math an “include” pattern.

By default, Mirror compares files both by size and the time of the last modification to determine whether to copy them to the destination or to exclude them. However, the application offers additional options to disregard such comparison criteria and even features an option to compare the content of files byte by byte. Needless to say, this takes a considerable amount of time but it is the most accurate comparison.

There are also a few advanced features that are meant to avoid FAT time imprecisions, as well as quite a few logging-related settings.

With no GUI available, Mirror is probably not the best tool for beginners. Nevertheless, thanks to the plethora of configuration options, it is surely going to be an asset to more tech-savvy users or programmers.