Russel - A comment on "data rivers". There are major drawbacks using dropbox as a "data river" - i.e. a bidirectional stream of data that keeps a folder tree continuously synchronized between two PCs. Let me elaborate: My principal use of dropbox is to have a set of folders at work, and have them mirrored at home - in both directions. The idea is so that I can leav= e work at a moments notice, and know that I can pick up again at home where I left things at work. It also means that I have a backup of the sources on the cloud. I can't use DB directly for this for several reasons: - I have a folder called C:\Projects and nested within this are subfolders for each project (over 100 at last count). I might update th= e sources in any one-five of these folders on a given day. I can't just m= ake my dropbox folder as c:\Projects because there is way more than 2Gb, and= the majority of it is stuff I don't want to back up anyway (exe's map files, object files, editor backup files, debugger files - anything produced by= a build cycle). I just want to back up the sources. A comprehensive file exclusion scheme would solve this and pare the requirements to under the= 2Gb free limit. This is probably the most requested feature on DB forums. - Dropbox transfers stuff live. If I have my Projects folder connected to DB and I edit a source file and do a build, by the time the build is finished the updated version of the file has been sent to the cloud and = down to my home machine. Lots of edits means lots of transfers means lots of internet traffic. Not a biggie but some of my sources are quite large (= up to 3 Mb for a Delphi DFM form file with lots of components on it). An option to "transfer any file that has been updated but has not been upda= ted for NN minutes" would solve this one. - Dropbox does not allow for client encryption keys. Granted, the DB data on the cloud is encrypted, but by them, using their keys. This is = an important point because it means that your data is only as secure as you= r dropbox password. - Dropbox doesn't allow for data compression. Source files are always highly compressible. If my DB holdings on the cloud could be compressed= I would fit 2-3 times as much into my 2Gb (they probably do compress the f= iles as part of their host-side encryption - but they don't pass on the savin= gs to you). So I have used a hybrid scheme that gets around these problems. It revolve= s around another piece of software we bought called "Super Flexible File Synchronizer" (don't laugh). Funny name, it's not pretty, but it works, it's solid, and the support is great. It is a backup utility which does just about all of the functions that the backup utility I've been trying to write for the last 20 years does. SFFS implements files and folder exclusion, scheduled backups, compression and encryption and a whole host o= f other features I seldom need. Here's how I use it and DB: - I have a DB folder called "Sync" inside the "My Dropbox" folder of bot= h my work and home machines. DB keeps these folders synchronized continuously. - At regular intervals I use SFFS to run a both-ways sync between C:\Projects and "Sync". I have an exclusion filter set up to skip all t= he junk files and generated files so that "Sync" just has an image of the source files in the Project tree. I also get SFFS to compress and encry= pt the files, so the files inside "Sync" are actually ZIP files encrypted w= ith my own key. - The next time SFFS runs on the remote machine, the ZIP files that have changed are unzipped and decrypted back into the Projects folder tree. The whole thing works pretty seamlessly. We have our data river between tw= o PCs (or more - no reason why this can't be extended to keep several PCs sync'd) and a free encrypted cloud backup as a side effect. SFFS is also pretty smart when it comes to keeping track of files and folder that are moved or renamed. You can set it up to track deletes or never delete files from the backup. Ross On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 2:46 PM, RussellMc wrote: > BCC: Gavin - worth your knowing about > > www.dropbox.com > > > > At 06:10 AM 6/4/2011, RussellMc wrote: > > >2. Any way to give access to a whole subfolder - system seems to want > > >to give a link per file. > > > Yes - but I don't remember the specific details as to how to do > > it. However, the process was easy and seemed intuitive. > > In private area only. Not in public area. > > I've found that: > > 1. In the public area you can only share on a file by file basis. > You cannot publish a public folder with multiple files in it. > > They specifically note that this can't be done > > 2. In the private area, if you give access to a folder to guest_A by > sending them a link and they create a dropbox account then for then on > they can see folder in their dropbox. > If you then give guest_A access to a second folder it does NOT send > them a second request or link but just asks them via their dropbox > menu if they want to accept the second shared folder and, if so, it is > from then in immediately available to them in their dropbox. > > 3. You can share a folder with N guests without any sharing of other > folders by creating a guest_X email account somewhere, creating a > dropbox for that guest X and hen having all guests who you want to > have access log on to drop box as if they were guest_X. You can have > multiple accesses at once to the guest_X dropbox. This is a useful > mode but not directly supported by dropbox. > > Note that anyone logged in as guest X can add or delete files as desired. > > 4. You CAN place subfolders in folders in your drop box but if you > share a subfolder and not the whole folder with a guest the folder > nesting is not present at their end. eg > > Colour_swatches\Octarine > > if shared with guest-x will appear as \Octarine in their dropbox. > > 5. Files in an online dropbox will appear in the linked PC drop box of > any PC as soon as it logs on AND will show final files sizes using DIR > etc even though the file shas not yet been downloaded. This is very > useful as long as it is appreciated that the file may not yet have > made the hyperspace jump even though its directory entry has. That > this happens can be seen by wathcing disk capacity which falls > steadily as data is downloaded. A message is given when > synchronisation has finished. If you access a not yet downloaded file > it may well give preferential download of that files BUT I have not > tried that yet. > > 6. More > > Making a "data river" that flowed between two remote PCs should be > extremely easy and would allow low level use by wholly non net-aware > applications. > Things like eg offsite backup of ultra-legacy applications. > > Overall - powerful, useful, no seen bugs yet, a little quirky, good to > have. > > > > Russell > -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .