Moving shared folders

[BobAchgill]

What is the easiest way to move a folder to another computer that has shared public links attached to it and still maintain the shared links?  Is that what work groups does?  Or does Work groups only do that for internal folder shares?

[Moe]

I am not sure I understood your question right.

You can freely move around a share on your harddrive as long as it stays on that partition and harddrive. Sync will follow the folder around so you don't have to change a thing in Sync itself.

[BobAchgill]

And if the hard drive is usb external... can I move the hard drive to another computer running sync and the folder still maintain it's public shares?  If not how best to accomplish the moving of the drive to another computer?  Does Work groups or pro support this moving of the ext drive to another computer?

[RomanZ]

@BobAchgill Is your use case to store synced folder on removable media and use 2 different Sync instances to actually sync files there? If yes, 2 comments on the use case:

1. Links are tied to Sync instance. So, if some link is produced by instance A, only A and it's peers that are in My Devices list will be able to serve it.
2. In general, it is bad idea to push the same folder for 2 different Sync instances. Every instance keeps its own database corresponding to data it syncs. So every time you switch, new instance will see that some data in DB does not correspond to actual data.

[BobAchgill]

So to clarify ... is an instance a computer?  My use case is ... What if the  computer dies?  Is all the work to share huge data up in smoke and have to be redistributed and the peers contacted and asked to accept their share links and delete their old folders so versioning does not add a 1 at the end of the folders?  That seems like a waste if true.  I am hoping that I just move the 2TB external "share source" drive to another computer.  How is this disaster recovery possible if the sharing computer dies?

[RomanZ]

@BobAchgill Well, usually "instance" is a computer, but technically one can run 2 separate copies of Sync on a single computer, so I prefer the "instance" term.

Ah, now I see your use case. You are concerned about the "owner" instance dying and inability to share new links. 2 solutions here:

1. Use your external HDD (or just keep some backed up copy of your files somewhere). Don't use advanced folders, use standard ones. Keep the RW-key of the folder in safe place. If computer dies, you can setup a new instance easily using old RW key and data from external HDD - it'll keep seeding as previous computer did.
2. Setup some Sync somewhere, keep it linked to My Devices of the owner, but keep all the folders in disconnected state. Keep data on external HDD or backup it to safe place. If computer dies, use the backup instance (it'll be the owner), just manually transfer the data to backup instance and connect the folder there.

I initially thought that you are going to switch the HDD there and back on the fly, which is bad idea.