Topic awaiting preservation: Massive FTP synchronization

This isn't scripting, but it's certainly server-side, and so, here's my first post in this forum.

In my new job, I need to make sure that one GIGANTIC local web image directory (with hundreds of subdirectories and thousands of images) is mirrored frequently to a directory on our server. What we've been doing is putting updated images in a "to upload" folder, then often forgetting to do the upload.

What I want is to make changes to our local images, and have some handy program automatically copy only changed/new files to the server every hour or so.

I'm trying out CuteFTP's synchronization function right now, and it's taking forever, due to the massive scale of the task. Can anyone suggest a solution that would be a bit quicker/more intelligent, and highly automated? I went and told my boss "ooh, I can find a faster way..." and I don't like how my words taste when it comes time to eat 'em.

[This message has been edited by Perfect Thunder (edited 04-13-2002).]

well, asuming that you're using windows, you could possibly find an ftp programm that only uploaded files that have their archive bit set. (windows sets this bit whenever a file is changed/created).
So, you'd only need to upload them once, then reset the archive attribute, and then only update those with an archive attribute. After uploading again, reset the attribut...
get the drift?

so long,

Tyberius Prime