I've used WinSCP for a while with great success to maintain a directory tree with about 6GB of files on a remote server. I just hit a problem that I'd like to warn people about; perhaps this should be added to the FAQ.

I use the "Synchronize..." command with preview to compare and update my server's files. Usually it takes about five minutes to do all the comparisons before the preview window appeared. This morning, though, WinSCP started coming back with "No differences found" within a second. This happened consistently, and happened even when the directories were visibly different.

The problem? I'd accidentally changed my "Exclude mask" to an "Include mask". This not only excluded most of my files from the comparison, it also excluded the directories, making WinSCP do a vacuous compare within the top directory's files. Changing back to an "Exclude" mask fixed it. (Took me an hour to figure it out, though.)

The moral? If WinSCP isn't handling the files you expect it to, or isn't examining directory contents, check out that mask and make sure it's an "Exclude" mask.


Thanks,
Dan