Conflict Problem Not Covered By Help Center

[Preston3]

Hi,

 

I made some important changes to a large folder and had become uncertain about what was being synced where, so I decided I would start afresh. I diconnected the folder from BT Sync on both A and B; quit BT Sync (I am still on 1.4), deleted the physical folder on B, deleted the .sync folder on both A and B and used Finder to copy the folder and its contents from A to B. I then started Sync again, set up a fresh link between these folders (Reading and Writing permission enabled) and they started syncing happily. I thought this would be over in a minute or two since both folders were now identical, but it is not and I end up with Conflict subfolders on both A and B within the main folder. When I compare the contents of these folders I am completely stunned. To give but two examples:

 

A has a subfolder with 1 file. In the corresponding Conflict subfolder on B there 4 files not present in A. Now first of all, how is that possible since one is just a copy of the other? But even if we assume the copying process had not been perfect, why aren't the 4 files just synced?

 

A has a subfolder with 5 files. In the corresponding Conflict subfolder on B there are also 5 files and they are identical in name and size to the ones in A ... except that three of them have as their modified date "today" instead of two years ago. It goes wthout saying that I have not touched these files for years.

 

These cases are not covered in http://sync-help.bittorrent.com/customer/portal/articles/1596830-conflict-files-in-sync, which is frankly not very helpful at all.

 

Can anyone explain what might be going on and hopefully suggest a remedy?

 

PS. I should have added that .Conflict ONLY appears as part of the subfolder name. It does not appear anywhere else (not in combination with any files). This .Conflict folder has many subfolders, most of which have Zero bytes, but some have files (as discussed above).

Edited September 25, 2015 by Preston3

[GreatMarko]

These cases are not covered in http://sync-help.bittorrent.com/customer/portal/articles/1596830-conflict-files-in-sync, which is frankly not very helpful at all.

Conflict files/folders arise when you're trying to sync between different file systems which handle case sensitivity differently - as outlined in the Help Center article you refer to.

 

For example, some file systems will allow "FILE.txt", "file.txt" and "File.txt" to all co-exist as separate files within the same folder location, whereas other file systems will not allow you to save files named "FILE.txt", "file.txt" and "File.txt" to the same location, as they will be perceived as the same file.

 

Therefore, when syncing from a file system which allows "FILE.txt", "file.txt" and "File.txt" in the same location, to a file system which doesn't, conflict files/folders are created in the destination file system.

 

The solution, as outlined in the Help Center article, is to ensure that all files (and folders) have unique names with the same letter case when folders are added to BitTorrent Sync.

[Preston3]

I am sorry, I should have been clearer. I am syncing between two Macs, both running Yosemite, so there is no issue with different file systems. That is why I said the help message was not very helpful.

 

UPDATE: Now that the sync operation between these two systems seems to have finished I ended up with a .Conflict folder which to all intents and purposes is an exact replica of the original folder.