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Any word on if Dropbox will ever add the ability to sync arbitrary directories and not only the 'Dropbox' one? That's the reason I won't use their service. I wa
by meritt 14y ago
Any word on if Dropbox will ever add the ability to sync arbitrary directories and not only the 'Dropbox' one? That's the reason I won't use their service. I want to see native support that doesn't require workarounds such as symlinks -- their competitors all offer this feature.
- samspot 14y agoDo you have a philosophical objection to using symlinks? As of the last time I checked, you also need a symlink for Google drive.
- mayneack 14y agoThat's what I use on ubuntu 12.04 and it is great. Only problem is that if your directories overlap inside dropbox, they count twice. I'm rarely above 50gb though, so doubling a random directory (like linking my camera uploads to photos) is never a problem.
- meritt 14y agoI personally don't have a problem using symlinks but it's a user-experience thing. I know plenty of less-savvy friends and family who have a need to backup and/or share things -- Let's say a 'Photos' directory or maybe a 'Taxes' directory. Telling those people they must relocate their directories inside 'Dropbox' is confusing and, depending on the source files, can often break things (in the event of application files that has a particular requirement for the directory structure) Trying to tell those same users how to create a symlink is unrealistic and should not be necessary for a user-friendly backup & sharing platform. I didn't want to name drop other competitors because that wasn't the intent of my post, but as you brought it up, I'm talking about more user-friendly competition such as Mozy, Carbonite or SugarSync.
- samspot 14y agoThanks for clarifying. I agree with you on the usability issues, but would have expected you to say "won't recommend" instead of "won't use". I have noticed a surprising number of non-technical (70-year old couple at church) people using dropbox, but that could be due to access to technical friends and family (their 25 year old programmer son).
- bonzoesc 14y agoThe word is they won't: http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-there-one-Dropbox-folder http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-there-one-Dropbox-folder How do "arbitrary directories" work across multiple computers? Multiple operating systems?
- meritt 14y agoThanks for the link, gives a great answer to their justification. Other products (mozy, carbonite, sugarsync) handle arbitrary directories this by: You simply specify which director(ies) and where to sync those on each machine. You can also access all the data via a browser or on-demand downloads. A syncd directory only exists on a new machine when you specifically enable it. There's no automatic file overwriting or replacement issues. Sync is handled the same way as the 'dropbox' folder handles it. Also, they all have the equivalent of the 'dropbox' folder which is the only thing installed by default -- exactly like dropbox.
- waxjar 14y agoSyncing a single arbitrary directory would be enough for me. It would be very neat if I could simply sync the Documents folder on OS X instead of the Dropbox folder, which I use as my Documents folder.
- StavrosK 14y agoYou can already specify the folder you want to sync.
- waxjar 14y agoYou can specify a folder you want to place the Dropbox folder in, but you can't choose a directory you want to act as your Dropbox folder. I'd like my Documents folder to act as my Dropbox folder. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.
- StavrosK 14y agoNo, you can specify any folder, at the very least by editing the configuration directly (it's an SQLite DB). I've had it sync my documents too.