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Though they have been very successful, it's a pity that in my experience they have turned into something of a big co in the way they deal with customers and qui

Though they have been very successful, it's a pity that in my experience they have turned into something of a big co in the way they deal with customers and quite sneakily hide important technical limitations from hackers who might want to use them. After a year or two of happy premium-paying use, I noticed dropbox was using 100% of my CPU. Some googling suggested this was due to having too many files. Ok, fair enough, perhaps there are technical limitations meaning indexing >300k files is tough (very easy to get to that count if you're keeping open source codebases on DB), so I move files out of dropbox and clear its cache. After a week of constant 24/7 100% CPU usage and dropbox failing to update anything, I contact customer support and get sent copy + pasted boilerplate telling me to do what I've already done. After more than one email to say 'I've done that, what next?' I get told it's due to symlinks in my dropbox folder. I have several in node_modules folders, and have never had a problem with them before, so I find this weird but remove all symlinks from my dropbox folder. No change after several days. I try deleting files on the web interface - it refuses to do so for a folder with a large number of files in, and tells me to use the desktop interface (great...) Also throughout this dropbox repeatedly overwrites work files while I'm working on them (thankfully with backups.) At this point the customer support tells me how to delete my account if I'm not happy and they simply stop replying to my (polite) emails. Googling around it appears this issue has existed for at least a year and a half, and yet there is very little mention of it (there's a bulletpoint hidden away on their website) nor does the interface warn you about it at any point. How hard would it be to at least add a notification like 'looks like you're adding a lot of files, please don't add too many more or I might stop working'. I used to hold up dropbox as a great example of a YC company that was technically innovative and something of a hacker's company, but this experience has left me quite massively disappointed.

300bps 13y ago
With 300k files and symlinks, you are probably not considered a typical Dropbox customer.
- singular 13y ago
  As I said, very easy to achieve as a developer (I hadn't done anything crazy), and the symlinks were working up to that point. Even as a non-typical dropbox user (a developer, then), I think there should have been some kind of a warning a, some ability to recover from the situation b (I was left for nearly a month with a completely non-functional dropbox), and not suddenly getting dropped without warning by support c. If I'd known up front that a deployment of not that unusual amounts of code (especially if you use git) would have led dropbox to irrecoverably fail for me, I wouldn't have used them in the first instance. I don't think even as a 'non-typical' user the very poor, typically big co, experience I had was justified, esp. given that I am a member of the group of people who first started using dropbox.
  - ThomPete 13y ago
    I have a menu bar on one of my product pages that I still haven't aligned properly. Priority is in the eye of the beholder.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Good service/support is about recognising that sometimes your customers are not typical and accommodating them if at all possible rather than just serving the lowest common denominator.
  - mgkimsal 13y ago
    And good business means providing good support and service and infrastructure to the 99.92% of your customers who fall within your statistical norm while still functioning for the other 0.08%, even if you don't bend over backwards to 'accommodate' that 0.08%'s wishlists.
    - singular 13y ago
      Ok, so just pop up a warning in this situation. It's been a year and a half at least they've acknowledged this problem, so prevent somebody from having a non-functioning product - wouldn't take much effort. The problem is they hide this problem away and in no way warn you, I fully accept that they might not want to prioritise fixing this, I just ask for common courtesy - I had a month with dropbox basically not working at all. Popping up a warning isn't bending over backwards. I wonder what would happen if this occurred on gmail - you have too many emails so suddenly it stops working without warning, completely, irrecoverably. Would you still make the 99.92% vs. 0.08% argument? Or would you find it a bit off? At least warn + give a way out...
      - 300bps 13y ago
        Ok, so just pop up a warning in this situation. My friend, I don't believe you realize just how outside of the norm you are. 300k files is quite a large number of files for even a local file store to choke on. But there are actually two things that put you outside the norm. First, it is likely only technical users who are going to acquire 300,000 files in their DropBox. Second, technical users are already typically aware of the downsides of storing tens of thousands of small files on a file system and how common it is for even dedicated local servers to choke on them. We all have copied 300,000 small files and have it take f-o-r-e-v-e-r and then copy one file of the same aggregate size of the 300,000 small files and it flies through the copy. Why would DropBox be any different? I wonder what would happen if this occurred on gmail - you have too many emails so suddenly it stops working without warning Here's an experiment for you to try. Write a program that sends you 60k byte emails as fast as it can. When you get up to 300,000 emails see how well your Gmail account works.
ccozan 13y ago
I think the success of the Dropbox depends on the common people wanting to simply share/keep their files and not necessarily if someone can keep 300k+ files in there. For me as a hacker, I have at my disposal ( due also to higher income ) more powerful tools or hardware ( local/private NAS, higher bw, Amazon AWS, etc) real tools ( rsync, versioning, can customize/choose the filesystem, etc ) to achieve the same thing.
- singular 13y ago
  Ok, that's fine, so what is there to stop dropbox from popping up a warning when this limit is exceeded? Or for there to be some means of deleting things from the server side without having to manually click through to delete N files at once (where N << total number of files)? Or customer support that doesn't drop the conversation completely out of the blue? Having the system break irrevocably at any stage is totally unacceptable when you're dealing with people's data. Presumably you'd have a problem if gmail stopped working irrevocably because you happened to have too many emails? Would that argument stand up for you then, or would you feel aggrieved you hadn't been warned and had no means of fixing the situation?
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    In some ways, it reminds me of Apple's attitude towards their Pro Users - these users make up less than 1% of their customer base, and their revenue stream (and effort/attention) is focussed on the other 99%. So, because 99% of the users will never run into this problem, they're going to put minimal/no attention to resolving it, while focussing all their attention towards the 99%. The 1% hopefully realize this and migrate to things like http://www.filetransporter.com/ http://www.filetransporter.com/ or http://www.filosync.com/ http://www.filosync.com/ that might (or might not) suit your needs better. 3 years later with a Pro Account that I use every day - with a bunch of huge honking firmware images - I'm up to 3.02 GBytes and 1,965 items. And I thought I was a power users.
    - dmak 13y ago
      80/20 rule. You have to do the least work that would bring the most value to the busienss. It doesn't make sense that they allocate that time to fix an issue for the 1% instead of 99%. I think this is just a logical business decision.
jervisfm 13y ago
Not to dismiss the problems you have encountered, but I too use dropbox heavily with 100k+ files. Not as much as you do but still quite a bit more than the average user. I had tried out other common services (Google Drive, Skydrive) and they all choked with that large of a file collection. Skydrive would just crash and exit whereas Google drive had issues with file uploads. And both of these had terrible CPU usage (it was basically at 100%) which is not good for a laptop. This was a couple of months ago, so may be their syncing client have improved since then to deal with large file collections. Dropbox on the other hand was the only one able to handle my humongous file collection with no sweat. But as you point out it too has its limits. It's good to know that once one gets past/at 300k+ files, there are likely to be issues. I agree with you it will be good for Dropbox to publicly acknowledge the true limits they have in their service.
ddebernardy 13y ago
> indexing >300k files is tough (very easy to get to that count if you're keeping open source codebases on DB … Also throughout this dropbox repeatedly overwrites work files while I'm working on them (thankfully with backups.) To their credit, it sounds like you should have been using source control all along.
- singular 13y ago
  > To their credit, it sounds like you should have been using source control all along. I reply to this only so people don't think I am negligent enough to not use source control! Yes I use source control, but there are these periods where things aren't committed, during which you can lose work if some process overwrites files. The same goes for disk failure, unwise use of the rm command, etc. To their credit that a file you are currently editing is overwritten with an old version by their software, but hey at least that software made a copy? Are you joking?

300bps 13y ago

With 300k files and symlinks, you are probably not considered a typical Dropbox customer.

singular 13y ago
As I said, very easy to achieve as a developer (I hadn't done anything crazy), and the symlinks were working up to that point. Even as a non-typical dropbox user (a developer, then), I think there should have been some kind of a warning a, some ability to recover from the situation b (I was left for nearly a month with a completely non-functional dropbox), and not suddenly getting dropped without warning by support c. If I'd known up front that a deployment of not that unusual amounts of code (especially if you use git) would have led dropbox to irrecoverably fail for me, I wouldn't have used them in the first instance. I don't think even as a 'non-typical' user the very poor, typically big co, experience I had was justified, esp. given that I am a member of the group of people who first started using dropbox.
- ThomPete 13y ago
  I have a menu bar on one of my product pages that I still haven't aligned properly. Priority is in the eye of the beholder.
jiggy2011 13y ago
Good service/support is about recognising that sometimes your customers are not typical and accommodating them if at all possible rather than just serving the lowest common denominator.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  And good business means providing good support and service and infrastructure to the 99.92% of your customers who fall within your statistical norm while still functioning for the other 0.08%, even if you don't bend over backwards to 'accommodate' that 0.08%'s wishlists.
  - singular 13y ago
    Ok, so just pop up a warning in this situation. It's been a year and a half at least they've acknowledged this problem, so prevent somebody from having a non-functioning product - wouldn't take much effort. The problem is they hide this problem away and in no way warn you, I fully accept that they might not want to prioritise fixing this, I just ask for common courtesy - I had a month with dropbox basically not working at all. Popping up a warning isn't bending over backwards. I wonder what would happen if this occurred on gmail - you have too many emails so suddenly it stops working without warning, completely, irrecoverably. Would you still make the 99.92% vs. 0.08% argument? Or would you find it a bit off? At least warn + give a way out...
    - 300bps 13y ago
      Ok, so just pop up a warning in this situation. My friend, I don't believe you realize just how outside of the norm you are. 300k files is quite a large number of files for even a local file store to choke on. But there are actually two things that put you outside the norm. First, it is likely only technical users who are going to acquire 300,000 files in their DropBox. Second, technical users are already typically aware of the downsides of storing tens of thousands of small files on a file system and how common it is for even dedicated local servers to choke on them. We all have copied 300,000 small files and have it take f-o-r-e-v-e-r and then copy one file of the same aggregate size of the 300,000 small files and it flies through the copy. Why would DropBox be any different? I wonder what would happen if this occurred on gmail - you have too many emails so suddenly it stops working without warning Here's an experiment for you to try. Write a program that sends you 60k byte emails as fast as it can. When you get up to 300,000 emails see how well your Gmail account works.

ccozan 13y ago

I think the success of the Dropbox depends on the common people wanting to simply share/keep their files and not necessarily if someone can keep 300k+ files in there. For me as a hacker, I have at my disposal ( due also to higher income ) more powerful tools or hardware ( local/private NAS, higher bw, Amazon AWS, etc) real tools ( rsync, versioning, can customize/choose the filesystem, etc ) to achieve the same thing.

singular 13y ago
Ok, that's fine, so what is there to stop dropbox from popping up a warning when this limit is exceeded? Or for there to be some means of deleting things from the server side without having to manually click through to delete N files at once (where N << total number of files)? Or customer support that doesn't drop the conversation completely out of the blue? Having the system break irrevocably at any stage is totally unacceptable when you're dealing with people's data. Presumably you'd have a problem if gmail stopped working irrevocably because you happened to have too many emails? Would that argument stand up for you then, or would you feel aggrieved you hadn't been warned and had no means of fixing the situation?
- ghshephard 13y ago
  In some ways, it reminds me of Apple's attitude towards their Pro Users - these users make up less than 1% of their customer base, and their revenue stream (and effort/attention) is focussed on the other 99%. So, because 99% of the users will never run into this problem, they're going to put minimal/no attention to resolving it, while focussing all their attention towards the 99%. The 1% hopefully realize this and migrate to things like http://www.filetransporter.com/ http://www.filetransporter.com/ or http://www.filosync.com/ http://www.filosync.com/ that might (or might not) suit your needs better. 3 years later with a Pro Account that I use every day - with a bunch of huge honking firmware images - I'm up to 3.02 GBytes and 1,965 items. And I thought I was a power users.
  - dmak 13y ago
    80/20 rule. You have to do the least work that would bring the most value to the busienss. It doesn't make sense that they allocate that time to fix an issue for the 1% instead of 99%. I think this is just a logical business decision.

jervisfm 13y ago

Not to dismiss the problems you have encountered, but I too use dropbox heavily with 100k+ files. Not as much as you do but still quite a bit more than the average user. I had tried out other common services (Google Drive, Skydrive) and they all choked with that large of a file collection. Skydrive would just crash and exit whereas Google drive had issues with file uploads. And both of these had terrible CPU usage (it was basically at 100%) which is not good for a laptop. This was a couple of months ago, so may be their syncing client have improved since then to deal with large file collections. Dropbox on the other hand was the only one able to handle my humongous file collection with no sweat. But as you point out it too has its limits. It's good to know that once one gets past/at 300k+ files, there are likely to be issues. I agree with you it will be good for Dropbox to publicly acknowledge the true limits they have in their service.

ddebernardy 13y ago

> indexing >300k files is tough (very easy to get to that count if you're keeping open source codebases on DB … Also throughout this dropbox repeatedly overwrites work files while I'm working on them (thankfully with backups.) To their credit, it sounds like you should have been using source control all along.

singular 13y ago
> To their credit, it sounds like you should have been using source control all along. I reply to this only so people don't think I am negligent enough to not use source control! Yes I use source control, but there are these periods where things aren't committed, during which you can lose work if some process overwrites files. The same goes for disk failure, unwise use of the rm command, etc. To their credit that a file you are currently editing is overwritten with an old version by their software, but hey at least that software made a copy? Are you joking?