Windows: Microsoft’s SyncToy is a simple but effective tool for mirroring folders across hard drive locations, networks, or USB devices. With a 2.1 update, it’s been retooled to run faster, back up configurations, and handle errors much better.

We’ve previously featured SyncToy as a handy way to sync files between computers and share an iTunes library. It also ended up ranking among our readers’ five favorite syncing tools. 2.1 isn’t a huge update with new features, but it does utilize a new syncing framework, and a few annoyance fixes that will win over those who dig this “toy”:

• Better Performance: The speed of file copy operations is significantly increased across the board.
• Improved Robustness: Much more resilient to transient network and file system errors and better error reporting which pin-points which file the sync failed on in case there’s a fatal error that stops the sync.
• Folder pair configuration backup: Folder pair configuration is automatically backed up under %localappdata%\microsoft\synctoy\2.0. User can replace SyncToyDirPairs.bin with the backup copy to resolve last saved configuration.

There are also a few bug fixes—notable among them is a fix for NAS syncing failure. SyncToy 2.1 is a free download for Windows systems, including 7, only.