Folders Not Properly Syncing Across Multiple Computers

[Mesona]

I have a 13 GB folder with 510 files that I'm trying to sync up with several computers. The folder is a Steam game that I'm trying to push out to 10 computers that are all connected through a local network. All the computers are running Windows 7 Pro. All of Sync's settings are default.

The first odd thing that I notice is that, upon generating a secret for the folder, Sync only indexes 10.9 GB of the folder & 494 of the files. This isn't that disturbing, though, because Steam itself says the folder is 10.95 GB in size.

I started with Computer A. Computer A had downloaded, installed, and successfully run the game. I then started up Sync on Computer B.

Computer B successfully synced, and I was able to launch the game without any issue.

I then started syncing on 8 more computers.

Once all 10 computers were synced, I noticed a problem. The file size on all computers had dropped to 9.7 GB, and there were only 490 files. This was true not just for the 8 newly added computers, but Computer A and Computer B as well.

When I tried launching the game on any computer, even the original two, I got an error and needed to redownload 11 corrupt files.

So, I'm not sure what the exact problem is here. I repeated this entire process from scratch a second time, using 10 new computers, and got the same results. Am I doing something wrong with Sync? Is there an option somewhere I'm missing?

[GreatMarko]

First and foremost - are all your devices running the same, and latest, version of Sync? (1.1.26)

Assuming they are, the next thing to check is that the system time is correct, and the same on all your devices.

Assuming the clocks are all correct, the next thing to do is close down Sync on all your devices, locate any ".!Sync" or ".SyncPart" files in the folders you're sharing and delete these. Do this on each device without Sync running. Once you've removed any ".!Sync" or ".SyncPart" files, restart Sync on all your devices.

If this still doesn't resolve your issue, please check that the contents of .SyncIgnore files within each folder you're sharing are the same on each device.

[sts]

@GreatMarko

What do you mean by 'the system time is the same on all your devices'. I guess still if you use NTP to synch your time over network, there is a delta between different systems (in the range of milliseconds, or a second). In the beginning, do you synch a reference time? Because Im having the same problem: I share VirtualBox images and I had modified these and now they are broken, because btsync tried to synch chunks of it it shouldnt do, I dont know.

[GreatMarko]

@GreatMarko

What do you mean by 'the system time is the same on all your devices'. I guess still if you use NTP to synch your time over network, there is a delta between different systems (in the range of milliseconds, or a second). In the beginning, do you synch a reference time? Because Im having the same problem: I share VirtualBox images and I had modified these and now they are broken, because btsync tried to synch chunks of it it shouldnt do, I dont know.

Yeah, basically, if the current time on one device is say 08:50, and on another device the time is 09:13, Sync may not be able to correctly sync your files in the way you'd expect (i.e. newer files could get overwritten by older files, etc)

From 1.1.22 onwards, a new advanced "sync_max_time_diff" setting was introduced. Set to 600 seconds (10 minutes) by default, this tells Sync not to sync with other devices with system times that are more than 10 minutes different from the current device's system time.

This is why it would be worth checking that the clocks on all your various devices are correct, as if they're not, this could be one of the reason files are not correctly syncing for you.

[Mesona]

Thanks for your responses, I discovered the problem. Most of my computers were updated to the current version, but for some reason, a few failed and I didn't catch it. As soon as those devices were given the secret and added to the network, the files would break.

I've updated all computers and double checked to ensure they have the correct versions. Pushed the files out to 50 computers now with no problem. Thanks!