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Solved Need help from Dropbox experts regarding syncing...

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mitchellvii

mitchellvii

Well-Known Member
If you ever decide to stop using OneDrive, don't make the mistake of clearing out your online OneDrive folders. That's where your OneNote backups are kept. Learned that the hard way.
 

Liam2349

Active Member
If you ever decide to stop using OneDrive, don't make the mistake of clearing out your online OneDrive folders. That's where your OneNote backups are kept. Learned that the hard way.

Basically all of my notes from uni are on there lol. I guess I should check them out.
 

Moonsurface

Super Moderator
Staff member
I really like the layout of OneDrive.. the Windows layout it has. What do you like about Dropbox?
I like it's simplicity, and to me it's as simple as being just a separate drive where OneDrive and GoogleDrive are much more tied in with specific applications, for example attachments in Gmail can appear in Google drive. I am using Onedrive more though since I have access to 1 TB from Office 365 subscription.
 

malberttoo

Well-Known Member
So you need to rethink how to use dropbox. Dropbox syncs a local copy of your files between all your PC's and keeps a copy on the dropbox server. So you would just work off the copy that's in the dropbox folder. What's cool is that you can add your dropbox folders to be listed in my documents \ pictures \ etc... Just right click it and select include in library.

Why use dropbox? Because they have the best API's and many applications natively plug into dropbox that don't plug into other cloud solutions. They also provide superior Apps for IOS, Andriod and other devices.

Another thing is that Dropbox keeps a history of your files so you can roll them back if something bad happens to the current version.

Completely agree with this. I'm not a Dropbox fanboy or anything, in fact I have OneDrive and Google Drive in my taskbar as well, but I just play with those. Dropbox is where I live at the moment.

Dropbox is king IMHO where syncing etc is concerned.

As far as your questions @mitchellvii, just think of your Dropbox folder on your PC as any other folder, with one caveat. You put stuff in there, but anything you put in there is automatically backed up to the cloud. So you don't keep multiple copies of stuff on your PC in different places, just put the database right in your Dropbox folder. Everything stays local, so even if you don't have Internet, your stuff is all still there.

If you have multiple devices syncing to the same Dropbox account, and you add or modify a file on one of those devices, first the changes get uploaded to Dropbox, then DB pushes the changes out to the rest of your devices.

If it was me I wouldn't do symbolic links for anything with DB, I would just make sure the data that I'm working on is somewhere in the root Dropbox folder.

I rarely use the built-in "Photos" or "Music" folders on my PC's, instead I've made those folders in DB and use them exclusively.

Also like Kif pointed out, DB is nice because if you DO overwrite some file with changes and then realize OH SNAP THAT WAS BAD AND I SHOULDN'T HAVE DONE THAT, no problem, just log into the DB website with your account info, and there's all your files and folders. Pick the one you just hosed, and you will have the option to restore the version before changes were made to it. I believe it saves all versions for the last 30 days.

One thing that has always bothered me about OneDrive... back when they were named something else (but still owned by Microsoft), I had some... files... of a personal nature in my OneDrive account. Just temporarily stashed there. Absolutely nothing illegal or immoral, or tasteless, but I got an email a day or two later that Microsoft had deleted my files for violating their TOS. I was MAD. I realized then (and MS admitted) that MS is always looking at the contents of your account, and that creeps me out. I'm not saying DB is perfect or anything, but they have come right and said "we don't rummage through our customers' stuff", and I think they have even made changes with encryption internally, where they couldn't even if they wanted to.

Anyways hope it helps.
 
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ZorMi

Member
I like dropbox mostly for keeping all document versions one month, counting only the last one as occupied space. Their algorithm is efficient, in a few seconds syncs large files (I wonder how, checking in blocks or something)... and if devices are in LAN (like mine) sync goes peer-to-peer full speed, not waiting for the uplink to cloud first.
 

Kif

Active Member
On my SP3 I left the default settings on for OneDrive. I don't really have my head around OneDrive yet but I'm puzzled about it's integration into Windows 8.1. Why didn't MS just turn 'My Documents' into a sync'd OneDrive folders or at least a subset of 'My Documents'. The more I've read about OneDrive the more confused I get.
 
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mitchellvii

mitchellvii

Well-Known Member
One benefit of Dropbox is with easily getting links for images you wish to embed in a forum. Just go to your Dropbox folder, right click the image and it will copy the image link for easy pasting. Don't believe OneDrive offers that.
 
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mitchellvii

mitchellvii

Well-Known Member
So @malberttoo. For instance I have a folder called ExecutiveDecision where I keep all of my business files. Instead of having that on my hard drive and also in my Dropbox folder, you are saying I could achieve real time syncing by just letting it live in the Dropbox folder exclusively? I suppose a symbolic link would achieve the same result.
 

malberttoo

Well-Known Member
One benefit of Dropbox is with easily getting links for images you wish to embed in a forum. Just go to your Dropbox folder, right click the image and it will copy the image link for easy pasting. Don't believe OneDrive offers that.

Another nice thing is for Picture folders. Make a folder in your DB Photos folder and name it "Greece Vacation" and then put some picks in it and share out the link. Even as you add more photos or delete them from the folder, the link always works the same regardless. It's so nice for stuff like that.
 

malberttoo

Well-Known Member
So @malberttoo. For instance I have a folder called ExecutiveDecision where I keep all of my business files. Instead of having that on my hard drive and also in my Dropbox folder, you are saying I could achieve real time syncing by just letting it live in the Dropbox folder exclusively? I suppose a symbolic link would achieve the same result.

Yes exactly, no need for 2 locations, just let it live only in DB folder. It IS local on your machine, regardless of your connectivity state.

The owner of my company went the ultimate distance- he keeps literally EVERYTHING in his DB folder. All his programs point to their respective folders inside DB as their default save locations etc. In this way, if his laptop ever goes up in flames, he has no worries. He just finds whatever laptop he can get off the shelf (he travels a lot) and then would only have to re-download his DB to have his stuff.
 

Liam2349

Active Member
Yes exactly, no need for 2 locations, just let it live only in DB folder. It IS local on your machine, regardless of your connectivity state.

The owner of my company went the ultimate distance- he keeps literally EVERYTHING in his DB folder. All his programs point to their respective folders inside DB as their default save locations etc. In this way, if his laptop ever goes up in flames, he has no worries. He just finds whatever laptop he can get off the shelf (he travels a lot) and then would only have to re-download his DB to have his stuff.

Wouldn't you still have to reconfigure all your software to write to and read from Dropbox?
 

wynand32

Well-Known Member
One caveat, probably applies to both DB and OD: make sure you back up your local folder. There's a story about a guy whose local DropBox folder on one of his systems was corrupted and all of the files were deleted. This propagated through his entire DropBox account, deleting the online version and also at least one other local copy. Essentially, everything he had in DropBox was gone, just like that.

For that reason, I've made sure to include my OD folder (I switched to it from DB, haven't been able to tell a difference in my workflow) in my desktop backup routine. That way, if anything ever happens to those files, it'll be easy enough to recover to the last backup.

The one thing I don't do is rely solely on any cloud solution for the integrity of my data.
 
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