Have I solved my file problems?
For a while now I’ve been on a search for the holy grail of file synchronization. I’ve tried dozens of applications, but so far they have all fallen short in one of two ways. Either they sync files between two workstations requiring both computers to be on to sync (like Foldershare), or they are essentially an online backup (i.e. GoDaddy’s online folder) requiring me to manually move files between the server and the local computer which, while not only an inconvenience y requiring extra steps, can also be VERY time consuming as most services don’t easily sync the files between the server and computer requiring me to re-download everything each time I want to update one machine. These shortcomings are made even more obvious when the data in question involves tens of thousands of small files many of which are changed on a regular basis.
Originally up until about 6 months ago I did manually update the files every time I wanted to work on a project. In fact, just about every Friday night when I switched from my office computer to my home computer I would spend about 2 hours downloading the content of the web projects I would want to work on over the weekend. This exercise would then be repeated each Monday morning when I returned to the office. If I wanted to do much work during the week at home I was just out of luck as I often don’t have time to download entire sites and couldn’t take the chance of overwriting work I did at the office by working on the older files on my laptop. Something had to change.
Last Spring I discovered the wonders of the Western Digital Passport hard drive. This highly portable device solved most of my problems by allowing me to store everything on a portable hard drive which I could then bring to and from the office each day. This solution was almost perfect, but on occasion I would forget the drive if I was running late, or it would get unplugged when I was working causing a lot of headaches (I keep my laptop on my lap so whenever I would get up it would tend to fall).
Finally yesterday I found the holy grail of my file woes. I found an application that would automatically sync a folder on my computer with a secure server, and then replicate those files to my other computer as well. Best of all, unlike some of the other solutions that had failed me, this application is totally free for up to 2GB of space.
Known as Dropbox, this new little app came out of beta testing yesterday and has already become a very valuable tool to me. I’m using it on both my office and home computers and after transferring about 25,000 files it hasn’t missed a thing.
Other than being free, Dropbox has a few other features I’m certain I will grow to love over the next few months. First, it’s simple. There are only a couple of options to worry about, and you never have to tell it to do anything. Simply place your data in your synced folder (the application will automatically select your my documents folder to sync, but you can change this to whatever you want) and the application takes care of the rest. Second, it’s fast. If you’re adding a new file it will upload or download the entire file, but for changes, it will only transfer the part of the file that is new which can save you a lot of bandwidth when working with large files such as images. Next, Dropbox offers an easy to use web interface that allows you to access and manipulate your files from any computer with a web browser. Finally, unlike anything else I’ve found, you can use Dropbox on Windows, Mac, AND Linux so chances are you should be able to sync your data no matter what you use.
On the downside (yes there is a downside), I’ve found a couple of minor problems. First, the application is rather resource intensive. I’ve watched it throughout the day and although it’s CPU usage is low (it hasn’t gone above 30% for more than an instant), it has averaged between 50 and 150mb of RAM pretty much all day. In addition, you can’t specify more than one folder to sync, and it will not sync a whole drive. I have my “My Documents” folder assigned to a partition on both my computers and I had to move everything into a sub-folder in order to get it to work. Finally, unlike Foldershare, Dropbox only gives you the option to sync one folder which can really throw off your filing system.
In a nutshell, even with it’s shortcomings Dropbox is the best solution I have found to date for keeping large amounts of files syncronized between multiple computers.
Comments are closed.