So Far, Bittorrent Sync Is Still Only A Toy On Windows - It Only Runs While You're Logged In

[ewanger]

I have spent the last few months researching some of the low end paid cloud hosted drive/sync options which can work in a mixed Windows, Mac, iphone world.  Here is what I've learned so far:  1)  Google Drive  (this includes Google Apps for Work, Google Drive and Google Sync (Windows and Mac)Still very broken.  While Google gives people terabytes on paper, in reality there are no tools available which make it possible to upload even as much as 50 - 100 gigs of data without brain damage.  Only Chrome and Google Sync are supported as ways to upload data.  Unfortunately, both of these tools are so unstable on windows that they cannot be used for uploads greater than 25 gigs or so.  On Windows, Chrome uploads crash and google drive sync crashes.  Tech support told me that these are known bugs (if you count the untrapped complete crash of an app as a merely "bug") which have been known about for a long time.  There is no information regarding any attempt to fix them.  The other problem with Google is that every time you restart a crashed process, it makes duplicates of the folders and files rather than anything more sensible than that.  Thus, anyone trying to manage actual files in the real world is faced with an explosion of duplicates.  Uploads are also super-slow. Tech support suggested that I break my 250gig test upload into at least 10 pieces and upload each piece separately.  Obviously, Google has work to do on this.2)  Microsoft One Drive for BusinessStill very broken. While it is no secret that Microsoft has knowingly shipped a crippled version of Mac, it appears that it also crashes on Windows with any attempt to upload a meaningful amount of data.  (Over 50 gigs).  Once again, it is nice that these guys want to give us terabytes for a low monthly price, however, the sync software is too unstable to actually take advantage of it. Uploads are also super-slow.As with Google, work-arounds will be required if you want to use this product in the real world.  Obviously, Microsoft has work to do on this.3)  BitTorrent SyncUnfortunately, still a toy.  This is private cloud approach to folder syncing.  It is definitely hugely faster than these others and the software has never crashed on me on mac, windows or mobile.  The problem here is that the windows version doesnt support an implementation that will continue to sync folders if you're not actively logged in to session!  Apparently, there is a daemon/services supported version for Linux.  But why would anyone bother with a Linux implementation if they want a low end solution that supports mac, windows and mobile?  If we wanted to be sysadmins and use the same bread-and-butter sync tools and web front ends that the Unix world has been depending on for at least 3 decades, we wouldn't be screwing around with all this new stuff, would we?I haven't tested DropBox or Box for large (+100gig uploads).  Has anyone out there done so?  I like to know what you've learned.So, far I'm not have much luck at the low end looking for solutions that can actually take advantage of the low end cloud drives we're all being given.  No of the vendors want to support standard tools such as ftp, etc, for marketing reasons, so at this point, the low end seems to be pretty vaporish.Please share your thoughts,-Eric

 

[RomanZ]

@ewanger

We are aware of this feature request by our community members and would like to implement it in future. For now you can peek in that topic as people discuss ways to run sync as service and not to demand any users to be logged in.

 

I tried to run Sync in lab environment under SYSTEM account using Task Scheduler - it worked just fine and can be controlled remotely via WebUI. Although in a real environment there might be issues with accessing delivered files by other users, as all of them going to belong to System user.

 

[...] BitTorrent SyncUnfortunately, still a toy.  This is private cloud approach to folder syncing.  It is definitely hugely faster than these others and the software has never crashed on me on mac, windows or mobile.  The problem here is that the windows version doesnt support an implementation that will continue to sync folders if you're not actively logged in to session! [...]

 

I understand your frustration due to absence of particular feature in Sync, although there are lots of real world usecases where Sync does a good job for our community members. Take a look in a relevant subforum if you are interested.