My son really enjoys playing Minecraft, he likes it so much I would almost say he was addicted to it if it wasn’t for the fact that he likes to play games on his Android device just as much. He loves Minecraft so much that he went as Steve for Halloween and even spent his Christmas money on Minecraft Lego. Until recently he only played on the computer we have in the kitchen, but he has discovered that he could play on the media pc in the living room. I guess there is something about playing Minecraft on a larger screen that he enjoys. The other day he asked me if there was a way he could copy all of saved games he has on the kitchen computer to the media computer. I think he asked knowing full well that his dad would have a solution to this problem of his.
If you do a search on Google for how to sync Minecraft saves you get a bunch of posts telling you how to do it using Dropbox and symbolic links. That is one way to do it but it is so 2011, and this is now 2014 there are better ways to sync folders between computers that does not require symbolic links. I guess if all you have is Dropbox it is one way of doing it but here are a few other ways.
First off you need some sync software that can run on the computers that you want to sync the folders between and can sync any folders you want. Here is a short list of sync tools that can easily do this without using symbolic links.
- SpiderOak – Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, offers 2GB free.
- BitTorrent Sync – Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Does not offer cloud storage you would need to keep at least one of the computers on to sync.
- MEGA – Sync client runs on Windows and can sync folders to their cloud and between machines. Offers 50GB free. Pretty new so could still be buggy.
- SugarSync – No longer offers a free version but if you have it already it runs on Windows and Mac and can sync any folders you choose.
- OpenDrive – Offers 5GB for free but bandwidth is limited to 1GB/Day at 200KB/s speed so it might be slow depending how large your saves are.
Once you have decided on what software to use, you will need to install the software on all of the computers you want to sync data between. So if you decide to use SpiderOak you need to download and install SpiderOak on all of the computers you want to sync. This should not take long but it is a necessary step. In my case because I already have BitTorrent Sync installed on both the media pc and the kitchen computer it was as simple as setting up the sync.
Before you actually setup your sync between computers you should make a backup copy of your saves folder. You can simply copy it to another location or copy it in the Minecraft folder and rename it. Calling it saves backup works. this is just in case something goes wrong with your sync setup. You don’t want to lose all of your saved games.
Depending on which software you choose you will want to setup a sync for between your computers. This is different depending on what you decided on but the folder you will want to sync between the machines for Minecraft is the saves folder. The Minecraft saves folder is in slightly different places depending on what operating system you are using. For Windows it is located in %appdata%\.minecraft and you will see a saves folder. On a Mac I have read it is located in your Username > Library > Application Support folder. You can get here quickly by opening Finder > Go > Go To Folder > type ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft. On Linux the Minecraft folder is in your home folder but make sure you can see hidden folders or you might not find it.
In my case I went with BitTorrent Sync because I already had it installed on both the kitchen computer and the media computer in the living room to sync our pictures and other files between the machines. I simply added another sync for the Minecraft saves folder and in a couple of minutes my son was happily playing his saved Minecraft worlds on the media computer. As far as I know there have not been any problems since I set this up and it has the added bonus that all of his Minecraft saved worlds are now also being backed up by Backblaze which also runs on the media computer. Just in case something goes wrong I can restore his games from Backblaze. This has also saved a few fights between my son and daughter as well. Now when my daughter wants to use the computer and my son if playing on it he just goes and plays on the other one.
Do you sync your Minecraft saved games folder between computers? What software do you use and have you had any problems?
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