mexter

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Posts posted by mexter

  1. Well... it's really good to see that they listened. A couple of months ago I would have bought the license without question. I still may, but I'm more heavily invested in other products now (notably Syncthing and Plex). I'm not sure I want to go through switching systems yet again (well, ok. There's no going back from Plex, which btsync had hardly any overlap with anyway. Syncthing... maybe. It's been pretty stable of late. But I do miss some of the ease of use of BTsync and I recall it transferring much faster.)

     

    But anyway, thanks for listening. I think this is pretty much everything most of us asked for. 

  2. How can I make 1.4 stop asking for a 2.0 upgrade every time I boot up my system?

     

    Have you gone into Options - Preferences - Advanced and unchecked the option that says "Always check for updates to this version"? I have that unchecked and haven't been nagged in weeks.

     

    This being said, if you do have it unchecked and it still is nagging you, then it might have already downloaded the update to your temp directory. Assuming Windows, you would need to then delete it from your temp directory. But I'm not sure if the program works this way. 

  3. I've gave it another chance, so i have the shares set on both computers, and seem to be work... the only problem is, that the files are not synced ;)

     

    Both clients see each other, but no files are transferred... so syncing on 2.0 shares don't work at all.

     

    The client where the files should be synced, actually writes after every start that: "Finished syncing with x" but does not sync at all.

    Any chance you have selective sync enabled?

  4. As a technical point there is no reason that you can't use BTSync in the same manner as you are using Dropbox.  Granted Dropbox et al are an easier solution (especially if your on PC with restricted access) but it is doable with BTSync probably moreso with 2.0.

     

    Yes and no. The following assumes I'm duplicating Dropbox functionality on a machine that isn't mine for the purposes of getting a file.

     

    Assuming 1.4 and below you'd need to have the key for the shared folder. 2.0 you'd need the identity, and if I understand things correctly you have to be pretty quick to disable any shared folders you don't want synced to whatever machine you just installed Sync onto, and enabling selective sync. In either case you have to install a piece of software (BTSync) and have the requisite information.

     

    Dropbox has a web interface. So assuming I just want that one file, or a small number of files, I don't need to install anything so long as I have access to a browser. I can also install Dropbox on a Windows machine with limited privileges. I may also be able to do that with Sync, but I haven't tried. 

     

    In any event, that accounts for accessing small numbers of files. Dropbox wins that one, simply on the basis of having web access. For my other use case, cloud backup of personal photos and videos, BTSync doesn't have the feature. You can claim (and you didn't) that my server is "the cloud" but at the end of the day my resources are limited compared with a large corporation such as Dropbox/Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. If my server goes down or I lose a hard drive, I have nothing to take its place. I've got the most important stuff mirrored to my laptop, but that's hardly the same as having it on a near infinitely backed up machine in a vast server farm. 

  5. So the question is: do sub folders count as folders under this 10 folder limit. If they don't then I really don't understand all the frustration over the 10 folder limit. 

     

    Under DropBox (for example) you get one folder that you have to add stuff too. Under the free version of BT Sync you get 10 and they can all be anywhere you want, and include existing folders. 

     

    Of course if sub folders count, then I completely understand this thread. 

     

    2d

     

    Sub folders do not count.

     

    As for why the frustration, because I'm not willing to alter my entire file structure in order to accommodate a newly added limitation. I could absolutely force it to work using less than ten folders. Symbolic links, for example, might work as subfolders under this system. But that misses the point. They went back on their word and created this limitation. Who is to say that they won't make it 5 folders in version 3? (And them promising not to, which they haven't, means nothing at this point. No credibility exists in this dojo.)

     

    Now as for Dropbox, it's not a comparable product. I've never used Sync the way I use Dropbox.

     

    For me, Sync is more of a backup tool / convenience. I have personal photos and videos backed up between 2-3 computers, photos and videos from the inlaws backed up onto mine, my phone and my wife's phone's download, photos, and backup directories mirrored with a computer, Windows (My) Documents shared between my laptop and desktop, a share between my wife's laptop and mine, A few others.

     

    Dropbox is a cloud solution where I only put things I'm comfortable putting onto the cloud and / or I need accessible on a machine other than one of my own. Same with OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, etc. I would consider using those services to backup my photos and videos, but nothing else.

  6. And this gentlemen is the crux of it. While I totally get the issue everyone has with BT, there just isn't anything else out on the market that comes anywhere close to what Sync offers. From a technology standpoint it is a triumph of software engineering. File synchronization is a very complex subject (I really admired the engineering that makes dropbox work as well, it's also top notch.) It really is unfortunate that such a feat has to be mired by less than savory business tactics. 

     

    I sincerely hope that this impasse (I'm referring to the trust issue) is fixed for those leaving for other solutions, because it would be a shame to allow such a thing to keep Sync from flourishing. 

     

    I think you take my words a little further than I had intended. Syncthing isn't that far off of 1.4's functionality. It's close enough that if 1.4 suddenly stopped working that I could probably have it up in a day or two. But I'm hesitant about moving everything from a product that is "good enough" even if I'm not happy with the present situation.

     

    This being said, I'm in the process of moving over. The mobile devices are done, and I'm starting to migrate the laptops. 

    I think I chose my words poorly when I said "isn't robust enough". My initial testing has had some glitches, but the reality is I have things working the way that I want, and am loath to change. But there is exactly 0% chance that I will purchase or use 2.0 as is. At this point, I'm not sure I would even if it were free due to the identities concept coupled with the trust issues and the near total lack of dialogue from the BT side. So change is coming. 

  7. I want to like Syncthing, but (1) it's too difficult to set up for family/colleagues; (2) it doesn't provide trackers/relays so it doesn't work if both peers are behind NAT and/or firewall with no control over port forwarding; (3) does not support selective sync; (4) does not support sharing links, late permission revokes, etc.

     

    tl;dr nice for hobbyist use or for business use where you just want to sync two machines on a network, but I bet for many users not a real replacement for BTSync, Dropbox, etc.

     

    It's a bit disingenuous that people present in these forums as a general replacement of BTSync. It's not yet, and it will probably take a while before it is (e.g. because its current architecture doesn't support it).

    I agree with you. I'm using a combination of SyncThing and BTSync 1.4 right now because ST simply isn't robust enough. I'm not yet ready to trust it with the bulk of my data. But it's getting there.

     

    I don't currently care about sharing links (and actively dislike it). Permissions and selective sync is something I want, but have so far lived without and can comfortably continue to do so. 

  8. After the automatic pro trial phase should now be over for most of the users, 

    can you now definitely confirm that subfolders are not affected by the 10-folder limitations of the free version?

     

    I tried to find the answer elsewhere but everyone is still just 'assuming' or 'guessing'. 

    Also contacted the support weeks ago but never got an answer to that. 

     

    If yes, and unlimited subfolders are possible, this "folder" terminology is really confusing to me. I'd prefer to name it a "share" or something similar. 

     

    So, again in short:

    -> unlimited subfolders possible?

     

    Thanks for insights

     

    It doesn't apply to subfolders. You can share a folder that contains a million subfolders, and that will be one share, so far as the program is concerned. 

  9. We get your disappointed and justifiably so, but at some point you need to either walk away or stick around and stop complaining. Otherwise you're just trolling. 

     

    You're absolutely welcome to refute any points you'd like. But unless you're secretly working for Bittorrent Inc., you really have no business implying that people who don't like the current direction are trolls (an ironic bit of trolling, incidentally). 

     

    Perhaps you didn't notice, but this thread was started by a BTsync staff member. The reason people are angry is that he avoided talking about any of the issues we raised and instead came up with a completely idiotic statement about subscription models and long-term development of the program. 

     

    Speaking for myself, I'm still using the product (albeit v1.4) and I have every right to not walk away, and to bitch about it to my heart's content. If you don't like that, do what Bittorrent Inc. staff do and avoid answering questions here.

  10. You know if Amazon's server ever goes down, you'll be without your dropbox files then as well. 

     

    And what do you think the odds of that are? I mean, Amazon has a rather huge array of servers in multiple parts of the country. If one datacenter goes down, another temporarily takes over. Downtime occurs, but it's usually so brief as to be unnoticeable. And you won't be without your files, but rather you'll be without the ability to sync them.

     

    The odds of your personal equipment failing is orders of magnitude higher than Amazon going completely down for a significant amount of time.

     

    I don't think so, an identity has all the shares associated to it on all peers. However, you can disconnect them on peers where you don't want them and no actual files are sync'ed. You can also configure the default behavior to be connected or disconnected.

     

    The new model is indeed more complex than 1.4, but it also has an advantage: you can now configure a NAS with your identity and have it sync new shares automatically. This is much nicer then the old set-up where you had to log on to the NAS to add shares (which may not be visible from the outside).

     

    And this is actually worse in my books. I'm not using an NAS, and I don't WANT an identity adding all of my existing shares to a machine that I install BTsync onto. I want only a small subset of my my shared folders, plus whatever new ones for the new computer or device.

    And more specifically, I don't want an identity AT ALL. I want each folder to stand apart from the others. Identities are not a convenience for me. They're the problem in reverse. Instead of having to manually add shares, I have to manually remove them. And given the number of them that I have on my main computer, that's more work.

  11. So far the only "workaround" that has been given is that you have to go ahead and install it as Pro. Then you set ALL your devices' clocks ahead 31 days so it expires the free trial. Then you can set all your devices' clocks back to the correct time.

     

    They really need to give you the option of not trying the pro version if you know you're not going to use it.

     

    Remove license.bin from C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\BitTorrent Sync\License\###

     

    So far, the only official word about the inescapable trial was to "not spread conspiracy theories" when accused of forcing it as a way to make people dependent on having more than ten folders. Given how the company has been behaving since 2.0 was released, using the C word strikes me as entirely appropriate.

     

    There's a suggestion about moving time forward on your machine a month on the thread. Don't. It can cause complications with file versioning unless you plan on keeping that time on all of your devices forever.

  12. Ahh, thanks for clearing that up, I missunderstood the website, when it talked about volume licencing sounded like it is 40 per device. Yes I agree, subscption modle is wrong for what they are selling, I hope they see the light on that.

    I would love to go back to 1.4. I have screwed my self by updating to v2. Because I have a few IPhones I use BTsync to backup photos. No way to downgrade apps on iphones as far as I know :(. But I may just setup a compleat seperate BTsync server for the apple stuff and downgrade everything elce. 

     

     

    Unfortunately, I have no idea how to downgrade the iPhone app or if it's possible at all. On Android it's a bit of a pain since you have to install it and then disable auto updates for that app (or for those of us who are rooted, delink it from the Play store). I do seem to recall reading that the 2.0 iPhone app was backward compatible, but I'm not sure. Perhaps somebody else here has better advice. I've abandoned Sync on my phone and am switching to SyncThing (which has its own headaches, but does pretty much the same thing). 

     

    I think so long as you don't upgrade to 2.0 folders on your iPhone it may work. Don't quote me on that.

  13. If the price per device was lowered per device, or the 10 folder limit was removed, or if the pricing was change to be an overall account. Like a linked account, or something.

     

    It's not per device, it's per identity. You can use that identity on as many devices as you want. I still personally think that the model is wrong and overpriced, but in your case it's $40 per year. 

    There are instructions in the forum on how to downgrade back to version 1.4 should you prefer to go that route.

  14. I haven't gone Pro yet, but this doesn't seem to be a problem:

     

     

    Source: http://help.getsync.com/customer/portal/articles/1901273-getting-sync-pro

     

    I think you misread this. Reclaim doesn't mean you can change the identity. It just mean that you can take the seat away. Your own identity can't be changed. Neither can theirs. The only difference is that they could start again from scratch and create a new identity and then you could grant them one of your seats. 

     

    So you're user1 and you bought and extra seat. You grant your seat to your employee, s**tfaced2012. But it's 2015 and they're embarrassed about looking anachronistic and want to change their identity. To do that, user1 has to reclaim their seat, and they have to uninstall Sync removing all user preferences, then reinstall Sync with their new identity s**tfaced2015. 

     

    User1 is the owner of the seats. So if that identity is to be changed you would probably have to contact Sync support. I'm not completely sure on this, but from what I've read it looks like if it's possible at all, you would lose any of your saved share links and have to recreate everything from scratch. 

  15. But it's $50 per year per machine. Also, it's not unlimited, because it removed deleted files from backups after 30 days (which makes it kind of pointless for backups).

     

    Whereas Sync doesn't offer unlimited anything with regard to storage. You get "unlimited" in the sense that you can connect as many of your own machines and your own hard drives as you want. 

     

    Part of the problem is that Bittorrent Inc is under the mistaken impression that they are competing with the likes of Dropbox, Onedrive, etc. They aren't. Those are services that constantly hold onto your data / guarantee server uptime, etc. Sync is basically a conduit between two or more endpoints that the end user controls. The software was certainly worth paying for, but they do nothing to warrant a subscription, or even a $40 one time price. (I would have grudgingly paid $40 for a one time purchase before this fiasco. Now I've had too long to see how they do things.)

     

    Anyway, tl;dr Sync shouldn't be compared to cloud file hosting services. They're nothing alike. 

  16. So, now if someone has to change their name (e.g. a typo or that person got married), the advise is to do a reinstall, request all past collaborators to reshare and accept you as a peer again? I could see how that works when sharing within a family, but at work that'd be very annoying :/.

     

    Unless you're a paid subscriber, in which case I suspect you are married to that identity. 

  17. But if it didn't work like that, you could easily play the system by just enabling/disabling shares. Though, I think it is a bad limitation, because 2.0 would have been far more popular and well-received without the limit (keeping the features of 1.4 in tact). Serious users will want selective sync and the new sharing options anyway.

     

    It absolutely does, at least on the free version once the trial expires. I tested quite a bit, and unless an update has changed things, you have to actually remove folders in order to activate ones above the limit. So if you have 30 and you really want the last two you created before the trial expired, you will have to remove 29 folders. Deactivation while leaving them on the list is not an option..

  18. Not only that, but it would also break the connection with other devices in your "My Devices" mesh, so you folders would stop syncing. Or in the case of folders outside of "My Devices", if you'd shared a folder link with someone and then changed your username, it would invalidate the link.

     

    For these reasons, and the reason I stated previously, there is no "Change username" button, and the only way to change your username is to uninstall & then reinstall Sync.

     

    But that would imply that your username is basically a primary key. Why wouldn't they just make your user ID a alphanumeric string like a folder key and allow you to change your display name? Having an unchangable name isn't security, particularly when you can uninstall and reinstall with a different identity. If you wanted to pretend to be someone else, you wouldn't use your main identity anyway.

     

    Why not instead allow usernames to be changed, but include some sort of "transaction history" button when somebody wants to share something. You click on that to find out what previous dealings you've had. Something simple like, "You originally linked with UserX on DATE. UserX changed their username to UserY on DATE."

     

    If Sync is really using a username for the linking, then there are much bigger problems than folder limits or unskipable trials.

  19. Yes - 1.4 doesn't have the "10 folder limit" that 2.0 free has.

     

    Yes, "Selective Sync" is a 2.0 PRO-only feature

     

    Also, 1.4 had a simple and elegant key sharing system. 2.0 has identities which bring all of your folders to wherever you add it whether you want them there or not. (I haven't used this, so this is based on what I have heard others say. If somebody later says I'm full of sh*t I would probably agree with them.)

     

    Oh, and the 10 folder limit of 2.0... it's not just any 10 folders. It's the first 10 in the order in which they were created. You have to remove any folders from the 10 that you don't want so that the next folders in the sequence can become active. So if you have 30 folders, and that last one (#30) was one you wanted? You'll have to remove 20 of the folders in order for it to become active.

  20. Use a different identity on each device.

    Seriously? There has to be a better way. This would mean that, depending on the number of shares, you would have to purchase additional subscriptions. And in any event, requiring a different identity removes any of the supposed convenience of having the identity in the first place. 

     

    Maybe a mechanism to created a restricted view that only shows some of the folders would be beneficial? Sort of like the Steam family view, where a pin is required before it shows restricted folders? Or sub-identities that could be configured for particular machines? I think the latter would solve OP's problem.

  21. This one post per day limit is really annoying (and apparently, doesn't really help shutting out spammers).

     

    ...

     

    If you don't believe me and want it from the horse's mouth, here you have it:

     

    http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/34509-use-over-internet-without-relay-server/?p=101168

     

    (Of course, this does not apply when direct peer to peer connections can be established, such as on a local network or when port forwarding can be set up on one of the two ends.)

     

    Well, I've learned a few new things today. I have no argument with any of your particulars and am now irritated with myself for not understanding the technology as well as I thought. It'll be interesting to see what happens as I uncheck the relay server options under advanced settings. Since most of my use is local, probably not much. 

     

    At least I still have the security of lastpass leg to stand on still. 

     

    Also didn't know about the one post per day. 

     

    How about they have a version that doesn't communicate with the relay server for a one time flat price? I don't want it anyway.

  22. I was using btsync to keep backups of my photos, so I'll be moving to rsync for now. Need to consider Amazon's unlimited cloud drive offer too.

     

    Amazon's cloud drive is fine for a backup, since it will store the original files. Last time I checked they didn't have a utility so you had to use a somewhat buggy web interface to upload everything. Sharing can only be done one photo at a time. Took me a few tries to get all of my 30k photos up there.

     

    If you have Prime, there really isn't a downside if all you want is a cloud backup.