Yakoob on 8/11/2012 at 01:21
I am working on a few programming projects across both my desktop and my laptop so manual syncing has become too troublesome. Now I'd normally use my SVN, but while it works great for code, its not really well suited for Art assets, if only because my plan has a 1GB cap.
So I turned to looking at DropBox, GoogleDrive and Skydrive. So far I don't like how they force me to move all my files into pre-determined "Cloud Folder" (rather than being able to just add random folders anywhere on my drive) and I dislike the dearth of feedback on what is being synched and when - particularly bad with google which doesn't even tell me the upload/download speed!
However, the automatic synching leads to a few unclear cases - what happens when you modify a file via the web interface AND on a PC without internet, and then enable internet on the PC? Will PC overwrite the cloud, or will the cloud overwrite my PC? What if I modify it on my PC and my laptop and then enable synch on both at the same time?
Similarily, what if I modify the files on the cloud, and then start modifying them on my PC before synch finishes? Obviously I would see "old" files on my PC but when I modify them, will the changes get wiped out as soon as the syncher gets to them, halfway through editing them?
I'm just really paranoid about losing a few hours of work due to the auto-synchers getting confused which file is the "newer" one. Ugh this is kind of why I like SVN/Git better with manual commits and checkouts that solve these issues. They also do a decent job of "merging" files if there are multiple versions at different locations, or at least point out conflicts so you can resolve them manually.
EDIT: this is how I feel about feedback-less auto-synching: (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvmvxAcT_Yc)
Renzatic on 8/11/2012 at 10:45
Quote Posted by Yakoob
So I turned to looking at DropBox, GoogleDrive and Skydrive. So far I don't like how they force me to move all my files into pre-determined "Cloud Folder" (rather than being able to just add random folders anywhere on my drive) and I dislike the dearth of feedback on what is being synched and when - particularly bad with google which doesn't even tell me the upload/download speed!
(
http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/backup-any-folder-to-dropbox-without-moving-it/) Symbolic Links and U. No, it's not the most elegant solution to your problem, and can't comment on it myself since I haven't tried it, but it supposedly works pretty well. I wish they all did the Ubuntu One thing, where all you had to do was rightclick on a folder, and tell it to sync to the cloud service.
Quote:
However, the automatic synching leads to a few unclear cases - what happens when you modify a file via the web interface AND on a PC without internet, and then enable internet on the PC? Will PC overwrite the cloud, or will the cloud overwrite my PC?
The PC will always overwrite the cloud using the file with the latest timestamp.
Quote:
What if I modify it on my PC and my laptop and then enable synch on both at the same time?
...hmm. Dunno. Question is, why the hell would you ever do this? :P
I can't think of any situation where I'm working on two instances of one document on two separate computers sitting side by side. And if I were, I sure as hell wouldn't enable Dropbox on both simultaneously. I'd see which one I like better, and save it over the other.
Quote:
Similarily, what if I modify the files on the cloud, and then start modifying them on my PC before synch finishes? Obviously I would see "old" files on my PC but when I modify them, will the changes get wiped out as soon as the syncher gets to them, halfway through editing them?
If you modify a file before the sync finishes, it'll overwrite it with whatever you're working on, then upload that file. Remember, the PC gets priority over the service. If you have a file with a later timestamp than what's on the servers, it'll upload that file, instead of downloading the older one.
Like if I were to work on a document on my iPad, upload it to Dropbox, then get on my computer, download that file off the web client, work on it, then put it in my dropbox folder, it'll compare what's in the folder to what's on the server, and upload the file I most recently worked on.
It might be possible to confuse it, sure. If you run around working on a single document over the 6 computers you have lying around the house, then fire up dropbox on each one of them simultaneously, you're likely to lose something. But hell..who'd do that? For most people, it's all a linear workflow. Work on document on your laptop, upload file, move to other laptop/desktop, open file from inside dropbox folder, continue working from there.
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I'm just really paranoid about losing a few hours of work due to the auto-synchers getting confused which file is the "newer" one. Ugh this is kind of why I like SVN/Git better with manual commits and checkouts that solve these issues. They also do a decent job of "merging" files if there are multiple versions at different locations, or at least point out conflicts so you can resolve them manually.
To summarize, unless you're incredibly spastic, and work on one document over multiple PCs, making separate changes to that same document across those multiple PCs, you don't have much to worry about. It's kind of a shame you can't merge changes using dropbox, but it's not an SVN. It's a file syncer. It'll always go for the document with the latest timestamp.
SubJeff on 8/11/2012 at 15:30
The only issue is the timestamp.
Can you guarantee that it will be correct? What if one off the computers has the wrong date set? What if connection is lost part way through an upload?
I'm sure there are other things that can go wrong.
Yakoob on 8/11/2012 at 16:40
Huh interesting; I was actually looking at the Google Error messages and one of them was "cant synch, file is a link" so I didnt think that would work. Maybe with dropbox tho?
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The PC will always overwrite the cloud using the file with the latest timestamp.
Not to question your knowledge, but do you have any official source for that? It doesn't seem to be the case with Google at least - I keep modifying docs via the web-interface and my local versions get updated later on accordingly, so the PC doesn't always overwrite. Timestamp seems to be more of a deciding factor.
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...hmm. Dunno. Question is, why the hell would you ever do this? :P
I didn't mean intentionally ;) I did forget to "synch up" some of my files before, and ended up doing like an hour of work only to notice I had been working on outdated files and need now manually "merge" the two versions or lose progress. One of the reasons I started looking at cloudstorage or SVN so it doesn't happen again :p
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I can't think of any situation where I'm working on two instances of one document on two separate computers sitting side by side. And if I were, I sure as hell wouldn't enable Dropbox on both simultaneously. I'd see which one I like better, and save it over the other.
I don't always turn my computers off, and I don't always think to shutdown Google/Dropbox in the background. Hence one PC could start synching while I start accessing the files on the second one and... messy. Granted maybe that's partly my fault, but I feel the software should be smart enough to somehow handle this scenario - after all that's half the point of it.
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To summarize, unless you're incredibly spastic, and work on one document over multiple PCs, making separate changes to that same document across those multiple PCs, you don't have much to worry about.
Well like I said, it's not like I intend to do that, BUT those things happen. Sometimes my net craps out; sometimes there is an error in synching. Sometimes i shut down the PC before synch finishes. There are many natural cases where you can end up with half-synced files across multiple devices, and that's when I "worry" the autosync may get confused and wipe some of the progress.
Renzatic on 8/11/2012 at 19:02
It's a good thing you questioned my knowledge, because I was wrong about the timestamps. It scans and saves files using hashes and chunks so it doesn't have to reupload or distribute the entire file every time you save. It only uploads the changes. I could've sworn it compared timestamps, but...nope.
Basically, the most recently committed version of the file is the one that gets uploaded and distributed. If you save your file on one computer, but forget to turn dropbox on to upload it, then continue working on an older version of the file on another computer and upload it, it will overwrite the original file on your first computer. There's nothing you can do about that other than be a little careful. Make sequential saves, always make sure DB is running when working on a file directly inside of it, etc. etc.
The good news is if you accidentally upload an older file, you're not totally screwed. Dropbox keeps old versions of your files backed up for 30 days. All you have to do is rightclick on the file with DB running, go to the DB submenu, and clicking "show previous versions". You can restore whichever one you want from there. You can restore individual files or whole folders this way.
Skydrive does the same, but I'm not sure how long it keeps the backup. I have no idea if Google Drive offers this or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does.
Half synced files? I've been in situations where my comp has shut down or I've lost net connection while uploading, and it's never screwed me over. It seems to know when it's been interrupted, and continues on with the upload once everything is up and running again.
I've been using dropbox for a couple of years now, and only had one issue when it randomly decided to disappear an entire folder on me back in its earlier days. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but it was fixed easily enough. Really, it seems that the developers of all these programs have thought of every problem that might arise, and have a contingency to deal with it. You'd have to try really, really hard to screw any of them up.
Yakoob on 11/11/2012 at 18:48
Well after a few days of trying GoogleDrive I am finding it utterly terrible.
* It completely rapes my internet connection. Everything stops to a crawl. Even uploading tons of stuff to my FTP doesn't have that effect
* It does a terrible job of informing you what is being synched when. Only "synching 1 of 59,375". No Estimate time. No download speed. Will it finish in 10 minutes? 10 hours? Mystery!
* The shell sync icons are broken half the time. Right now it tells me all my folders are synced, only when I go in and look at specific files it says they are syncing.
* I deleted a folder on another PC that is on the laptop, and now it has a sync icon on it. Is it re-uploading the deleted folder? Is it deleting it from the laptop (as it should)? Who knows!
* The configuration options are woefully bare; you pretty much cant customize anything.
Pity, as I rather like GoogleDocs :| Might try my DropBox since at least it seemed a bit more transparent/not broken about letting me know when sync finishes.
SubJeff on 11/11/2012 at 19:56
Sounds like your network tbh. It's the only cloud service I use.
zombe on 12/11/2012 at 12:41
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Huh interesting; I was actually looking at the Google Error messages and one of them was "cant synch, file is a link" so I didnt think that would work. Maybe with dropbox tho?
Sure? Perhaps you are confusing .lnk files (aka. shortcut) with actual symbolic links (that, differently from .lnk, have support from NTFS side => aka. they actually work) - they are not the same. It is rather difficult to distinguish a local folder from a symbolic-linked one (i have no idea how one can do that without external pre-made programs :/). I used symbolic links to move minecraft save-files elsewhere (different partition). Not sure whether NTFS supports hard linking (edit: it does) ... but symbolic linking should be sufficient for every imaginable real world application.
Yakoob on 17/11/2012 at 00:10
Well I think I am officially 'done' with google cloud drive; it does not seem to even sync properly between 2 computers, and as a result I have a whole bunch of duplicate files and folders with (1) attached at the end. Don't even know how that happened - I 'synced' files from my laptop, then turned it off permanently, then synced from my PC, did some changes, turned off, then went back to my laptop to resynch (without any changes), and now I have a bunch of duplicates on both ends.
Hnngh... maybe I should just shell out money for extra SVN space at this point; never had this issue using it before.
(also, in before you guys tell me "yak wtf you doing Ive never encountered this." maybe I just got bad cloud-storage karma. damn and I even bought my roommate pizza last night :/ )
SubJeff on 17/11/2012 at 00:58
Maybe you should have used an non-imaginary product, like Google Drive or Amazon Cloud Drive.
