Android Sync Folder- Does Btsync Move Or Copy Files?

[sinksync]

When I create a folder on my android to sync to my PC, what does BTSync do with the files that I choose to sync?

 

Does it:

 

1. Leave them in their old directory and send them to my BTSync folder on my PC.

 

2. Move them to the BTSync folder on my phone and then send them to my BTSync folder on my PC.

 

3. Copy the files to the BTSync folder on the phone and also leave them in their old location, thus creating duplicates, before sending the files to my BTSync folder on my PC.

 

 

I ask because I've set it up to sync some folders to my PC and the old directories are there but some of them are empty and some aren't i.e. the file structure is there but the content is now in the phone BTSYnc folder. However, this has not happened for all the folders, namely my photos.

 

The SD card is now completely full, which makes me think BTSync has created duplicates, and so my phone is really slow.

 

There doesn't seem to be a single rule that BTSync has followed, it's done a mix of the above.

 

All the files I have selected to sync have been sent to my PC.

 

If anyone could shed some light on the situation that would be greatly appreciated.

[RomanZ]

@sinksync

 

It will do #1. It is not moving files anywhere on your phone, but syncing them from the location you chose.

 

As for you situation - could you please elaborate? Which folders exactly have you synced and what exactly happened? Screenshots also make it easier to understand.

[sinksync]

Hi RomanZ, thanks for your response.

 

On closer inspection what appears to have happened is that BTSync has created a file structure inside the directory (my phone)\Card\Android\data\com.bittorrent.sync\files for all the folders I wanted to sync from the SD card of my phone to my PC. This file structure is mirrored on my PC and all the files I wanted to transfer have been transferred. There are no duplicates of these files on the phone. So far so good.

 

The bit that's caused the confusion: I added files from both my phone SD card and internal memory to be synced, and I used the same BTSync folder on my SD card to do this. BTSync has copied the files that I wanted to sync from the phone storage to the directory mentioned above on the SD card before syncing them to my PC. This has taken up 1.7gb of space which has now completely filled my SD card.

 

I notice that there are 2 BTSync directories on my phone, one on the SD card (mentioned above) and one on the phone storage ((my phone)\Phone\Android\data\com.bittorrent.sync\files).

 

Do I need to send data from my SD card to one folder on my PC, and data from my phone itnernal memory to a different folder?

 

I hope all that makes sense. It's taken up quite a lot of my time today trying to get my head round it.

[RomanZ]

@sinksync

 

I'm a bit confused on what you describe. The phone storage (your phone)\Phone\Android\data\com.bittorrent.sync\ is used to store database and other service files. Sync is not intended at all to copy files from one location of PC / Device to another location. It only copies (synchronizes, to be precise) between different computers.

 

Here is the part that I lack of understanding:

The bit that's caused the confusion: I added files from both my phone SD card and internal memory to be synced, and I used the same BTSync folder on my SD card to do this. BTSync has copied the files that I wanted to sync from the phone storage to the directory mentioned above on the SD card before syncing them to my PC. This has taken up 1.7gb of space which has now completely filled my SD card.

Can you please write absolute paths on which folders you've added and what been copied?

 

Thanks!

[sinksync]

Thanks for your response RomanZ.

 

I ended up uninstalling the app because of the file duplication issue. I can't tell if it was a bug or if I wasn't using it properly. The latter may be true, I was trying to use the sync setting for backup purposes. I'm now using the backup setting (for some reason I couldn't/didn't find the backup option until after I reinstalled the app. Perhaps I had version 1.3 on my phone, rather than version 1.4).

 

Either way, when I uninstalled the app I suddenly had 6gb of free space on my SD card. In my post earlier I mentioned that after running my first sync it used up all the free space on my SD card. I had no idea it was this much. The only explanation can be that it duplicated the files it was meant to sync. Could this be something to do with Simple Mode and the files being copied to the default directory before syncing, rather than being synced from their original location only?

 

Regardless, I'm now running the backup utility and it's working well.

[RomanZ]

@sinksync

 

That's really sounds confusing. Sync is not copying any data on the device locally... BTW, the folders you add - how many files are there? I can only suggest that you have huge amount of files which bloats the DB.