rpod83

I have a large (~90 GB) music folder synced between a mac and a PC. The BT Sync client says they are both in sync and with the correct size, but the actual size of the folder on the Mac hard drive is about 6 GB more than on the PC. I have looked through to try to spot the difference, but I don't see any obvious extra or duplicate files, subfolders, etc. But there is a lot to look through, I could have missed something. Does anyone have an idea of what it could be? I was thinking possibly the Spotlight index data, but I don't know where that lives. Thanks!

The devs have clearly indicated they will not support this feature, even though it seems to me both extremely useful and almost trivial to design, so I came up with my own solution. It's really rough and maybe there is a better one, it's the first thing I tried. The idea is to have a folder (Music for example) synced between a couple PCs AND an external hard drive that is attached to one of them. The purpose just being to keep a consistent backup. But basically the way BT sync works, only one secret per device. So I now have one of the PCs running a virtual machine whose dedicated purpose is connecting to my external hard drive and running BT Sync. It took a while to install and get up and running, but now all three locations are synced and it seems to be working as expected. The only downside is needing to keep this VM up, or remembering to periodically launch it to let the sync occur. WHY not support this feature with a "virtual device" concept built in to BT Sync?

@GreatMarko, I've yet to see something with the automatic syncing nature of a Dropbox, Cubby, etc. that will sync from an internal to external hard drive. Except for things like rsync, etc., that are designed more for IT people. I want something stupidly simple to set up, like how most of these cloud syncing tools work. Can you recommend something? Thanks!

So I had a similar question and I am still unclear: can anyone (at BitTorrent Inc. or otherwise) see the filenames or metadata of the files being synced (without knowing the secret of cource)?

I know this topic has been brought up before and is in the sticky FAQ: "Can I use BitTorrent Sync to backup from an internal drive to an externally connected USB drive? No, BitTorrent Sync will not permit you to sync one folder location on your computer to another location on the same computer (i.e. you can't have two shared folders using the same "secret" on the same device)" BUT I have been constantly looking for this feature and it seems like no one supports it. Drive, Dropbox, Cubby, etc., none support it. The utility is so obvious! We sync for both accessing files and backing up files, and being able to back up to an external drive creates another simple point of backup redundancy as well as keeping that external drive always up to date for taking it to someone else's computer. I am a software developer and I don't understand the difficulty. The use case is even simpler than syncing over a network. The software stack should remain the same until the networking layer, and at that point supporting this seems trivial. At some point the software must identify end points that are out of sync and begin the syncing process. Instead of sending the file over the network, just do a copy/replace! Anyway sorry to rant a bit but I would LOVE this feature and it seems like no one is willing to acknowledge that it's useful or put it on their roadmap. Otherwise I think BT Sync seems very promising.