hatedropbox

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  1. Another thought: If BTSync can integrate "file retrieval feature" in folder that's not synced would be even more ideal. This is already done by SkyDrive, which has an option to enable "fetch file from this computer".
  2. I have a suggestion for greatly expanding BTSync's functionality at marginal effort. Many users use "thin clients" type of devices everyday (due to portability etc.) and they use these thin clients to generate input files on a daily basis. However, these thin clients devices do not usually have generous disk space. The current BTSync is more a pure sync software - however, by taking a tiny step further, it can also add a powerful backup function. For example, I have three projects and I record conference talks on them regularly. The recording files are quite large and I would like to back them up regularly so I can clean them out of my disk in time to prevent disk space fillup. It would be very nice if I have this folder on both my "thin client" laptop and home server (which is on 24/7) named "Proj1_conference_talk". And whenever I drag a file (say 2013-04-25_proj1_conference_talk_recording.mp3) into this folder on my thin client notebook and it will start to send this file into the corresponding folder on my remote home server. After the transfer is complete, this file on my notebook will be deleted. I can currently find a rough workaround by using the windows's native robocopy in CMD. I think by wrapping the commands in a script the process can be even made more automatic. So the workaround is to create a folder called Proj1_conference_talk_Temp on my remote server (synced to the folder on my thin client laptop) and ask the robocopy to move out everything in it except for file with .sync extension to another folder named Proj1_conference_talk_Final. This can be done on a per-day basis if the script is integrated with task scheduler. However, this is still quite distant from ideal: for example, if I place another file with same name of an existing file, the robocopy will not prompt if you want to overwrite it although you can specify so in the script (does not allow flexibility). If anyone has more thought on this, please do not keep it to yourself. Currently I think I have not seen any other one suggesting this kind of things so far
  3. I did a comparison with AeroFS, which just came out earlier this month to masse. They have versioning but only the most recent version. They hide all of the versioning files in a hidden folder in the same directory where AeroFS folder is located. Therefore I don't think they are smart enough like Dropbox who claims to have the incremental algorithm. Maybe we can do some sort of byte-stream profile matching? Just some thoughts :-|
  4. I agree that shadow copying is a must. With this enabled, there is no need to enable windows' own shadow copying, which essentially will create redundency. Also, windows' own shadow copying is done only once per day at max. frequency (disappointing for someone who need every version within a single day). What I am concerned about is my syncTrash folder is growing exponentially - can there be some smart algorithm that doesn't simply just lump all of the previous versions altogether, but rather distinguish the INCREMENTAL changes? This can save tons of space. Not sure if Windows' native shadow copy uses this technology but that will really be fantastic. Also, since the box of "put deleted file into synctrash" is checked by default, user should be somehow made more aware that the trash are hidden and THEY ARE ACTUALLY SITTING THERE AND CONSUMING SPACE - otherwise they may be wondering why the folder is building itself into a ridiculous space-hog. The incremental-smart algorithm will also come handy when it comes to up/download. Say I copy a file in one folder and the app actually upload the copy and redistribute it to peers - but is it really needed? Can it just look around and say - hey let's compare this file to the neighbor. And then it just order other peer to simply copy it as well. This will cost minimal bandwith, but at the cost of more CPU - which I would rather trade in. Also, the tick/wheel icon attached to file icon universal to dropbox/skydrive/etc indicating if the file is in sync or synced is missing here. That's a must. Progress bar is also helpful, as many suggest, especially for large files this will reassure user how soon it can be finished. At last, the current version still have renaming problems - hope this basic functional issue can be resolved. If user cannot even depend on the most basic function, then how can they count on the fancier stuffs?