29 comments

• Shailabh NagarWhy, what happened ? Hide
• Sri KrishnaDo tell; See translation Hide
• Saurabh JDropbox is not meant for teamwork. As members of my team edit files, it constantly consumes bandwidth keeping me abreast with the minutest of changes. But if you turn sync off, you don't get the the changes you want. There is no way to say, 'stop updating shared folder x where mechanical engineer guy is editing insanely large cad files, but do update y where someone is writing a project proposal'. Guess I'm using the wrong tool for the job. With bandwidth caps on airtel connections at around 100GB, it's unsustainable.
• Pratul AgarwalDid you try the selective sync option? Hide
• Joydeep Sen Sarmabtw - for large files - does it seem to do some intelligent delta sync - or syncs everything? Hide
• Pratul AgarwalIn my experience it does do delta sync. But your mileage may vary. Hide
• Ayush JainIt seems to do delta sync for large files. Hide
• Saurabh JI don't know about selective sync. Will check that. I don't see it doing selective sync ever with binary file formats like CorelDraw or Solidworks.
• Ess Kayso evrytime my photon bandwidth got used up just because I update designs at my home? Hide
• Pratul AgarwalSaurabh yes try selective syncing folders. It has worked well for me. If you have a large number of files. It may take some time first time to apply sync settings. But after that it's robust. Hide
• Pratul AgarwalWell the word on street was it's not only the users worried about bandwidth and transfers. So is Dropbox because they are/were housed in Amazon S3. It's costs them money for sending out data. So they do delta syncs. In fact they go beyond that. They do delta syncs and hash comparisons systems wide. So if you upload a popular movie file of several GBs that you downloaded from net. And it says it's done in 1 min. It's because it did some smart hashing and found that file is in the system already Hide
• Joydeep Sen Sarma@pratul - it's strange they can get away with this. every time there was a CD uploading service built around this paradign - the RIAA would shut the company down .. (basically once u analyze content and store hashes - that's enough for RIAA to come after). Hide
• Pratul AgarwalSo I had heard. Music and movies are a can of worms. What I can confirm is that I have noticed almost instant syncing of a file in my Dropbox when the file was already in my account somewhere else. Hide
• Saurabh JSorry meant Delta sync in the previous post. There is no delta sync as in rsync. Binary files upload fully. Have investigated using iftop on the gateway. Peer (lan) syncing is also severely broken. This even when all peers are license windows hosts, not multiple os scenarios. Maybe there is delta but it is so shitty compared to rsync or git that its meaningless. Or maybe their focus is more on server side hashing. Sagar yes Dropbox has been screwing your photon connection. Turn of Dropbox sync when working on designs because every time you save the moron eagerly uploads the change. This is why
• Saurabh JPratul multiple copies of the same file are instant. But for a well organised person, multiple copies of a file usually don't happen. It's a useless scenario.
• Pratul AgarwalSaurabh I am not a developer I am a production person. Lack of organization is the essence of a good production person (because I am in the game of running rat races and organization sucks up time). I may not be organized but I know what junk I have and where it may be Hide
• Saurabh JSorry Pratul didn't mean it in that sense. What I was saying was that multiple identical copies of a file don't usually happen. What happens more are multiple versions of the same file with minor changes. Solidworks encouraged multiple identical copies. Each design is a folder. There too the right approach is to link each component using a shortcut to a parent, and only change the components you are going to copy. Plus the assembly.
• Pratul AgarwalNo worries. It was an inside joke. We in the domain consider pack ratting (or rat packing?) a virtue because we are limited by computing and storage is easier for us. If in doubt we zip tar and store. Hide
• Pratul AgarwalMy understanding is that Dropbox servers are heavily involved in hashing. I wonder if the distance to server might be a consideration. Also if the files are small. It might be easy for Dropbox server to invoke a full copy. Hide
• Shailabh NagarShailabh Nagar  · 12yWhy, what happened ?LikeHide
• Sri KrishnaSri Krishna  · 12yDo tell;LikeSee translationHide
• Saurabh JSaurabh J  · 12yDropbox is not meant for teamwork. As members of my team edit files, it constantly consumes bandwidth keeping me abreast with the minutest of changes. But if you turn sync off, you don't get the the changes you want. There is no way to say, 'stop updating shared folder x where mechanical engineer guy is editing insanely large cad files, but do update y where someone is writing a project proposal'. Guess I'm using the wrong tool for the job. With bandwidth caps on airtel connections at around 100GB, it's unsustainable.Like
• Pratul AgarwalPratul Agarwal  · 12yDid you try the selective sync option?LikeHide
• Joydeep Sen SarmaJoydeep Sen Sarma  · 12ybtw - for large files - does it seem to do some intelligent delta sync - or syncs everything?LikeHide
• Pratul AgarwalPratul Agarwal  · 12yIn my experience it does do delta sync. But your mileage may vary.LikeHide
• Ayush JainAyush Jain  · 12yIt seems to do delta sync for large files.LikeHide
• Saurabh JSaurabh J  · 12yI don't know about selective sync. Will check that. I don't see it doing selective sync ever with binary file formats like CorelDraw or Solidworks.Like
• Ess KayEss Kay  · 12yso evrytime my photon bandwidth got used up just because I update designs at my home?LikeHide
• Pratul AgarwalPratul Agarwal  · 12ySaurabh yes try selective syncing folders. It has worked well for me. If you have a large number of files. It may take some time first time to apply sync settings. But after that it's robust.LikeHideEdited