Need folder sync alternate to Windows Live Mesh

I tried Bitcasa and found it wanting - upload speeds were absolutely awful.

Your basic quandary, if I read it correctly, is you want a sync solution that doesn't bring in a middle man cloud. Have you considered MS Sharepoint? You can install the server to your local environment, have people create public or private document shares, and then have them sync'd with whatever machines can access the server or whatever machines can access the secure web interfaces.

I'm having some difficulties getting around the ideas of it, but it seems like it work for you.

Does the software cost anything? Because anything but an absolutely trivial one-time or monthly cost would make that a no go. I'd gladly pay a $40 one-time fee for a program that does what Mesh did. I won't pay $10 a month or several times that for something that has a whole bunch of other features I don't need.

Well, Sharepoint Online costs 4.00 a month, but that means you're hosting the sync at Microsoft, which is no better than Skydrive.

I honestly don't know how much Sharepoint Server costs, but it's a Microsoft Server product, so I would expect that it's not cheap.

i went looking and it appears i have 4 invites for AeroFS. PM with an email address if interested.

edit: down to 2 left.

Uh, dumb and elementary questions about AeroFS: if I want to use it to sync my Itunes library and files between two computers, do I have to copy or move all that to my AeroFS folder? Is the AeroFS folder showing up in Explorer a real folder or just some kinda virtual thingy?

it's a real folder. i hadn't actually thought about that situation before, but hmm, it is worth taking a look at actually! i don't think there is a real *easy* way of doing it, but there might be a workaround.

I'm finding that Itunes doesn't like it when you move the library, even when you tell it where the library is now. I moved everything back. :(

i've just played around a little bit using the Hard Link Shell Extension and made some Junction points on each computer pointing to the respective iTunes folders... this 'works' in that it will duplicate the entirety of the directory structure beneath/within those Junctions, but it isn't without issues.. such as, if both/all the machines have any unique content in their respective directory trees, i'm not really sure how (or if) it resolves those issues. i'm (truly) guessing that it wouldn't nuke anything, but it would have issues with any files that were named the same but perhaps differ in size or some other manner (same size, different content). also, not sure what, if anything, iTunes saves within those folders that is unique to that particular installation- does it save Apple ID info there or anything else? i'm pretty certain that having it up & running on both/all machines at the same time could cause some issues, as there is likely a library metadata file in there somewhere that tracks playbacks,ratings,etc.. so basically, don't run iTunes on both machines at the same time.. something like that. stupid software.

all that is just speculation, though. it duplicated my iTunes stuff just fine in the manner i was expecting it to, so at least i know now that it works right with regard to Junctions.. yay!

I'm going to go ahead and move my Itunes folders to AeroFS in the manner described here. It seems to have worked on my home computer.

good luck! my run-on post is pretty close to stupidly complex!

Can someone recommend a backup program/service for backing up large files efficiently, 10-50gb in size (think virtual machine images)? I'm primarily limited by upstream bandwidth, I'd normally just use rsync but that takes forever with these mammoths.

If upstream bandwidth is your limit then I don't think see how the program is going to make a difference.

Some sort of differential compression would do it; you'd only have to upload once and then just the diffs.

I think Macrium Reflect will do differential backups of any file set, but not sure if there's anything free or less heavyweight.

If he's uploading a single image file, unless that tool does binary diffs, that won't help much.

It does, I think it just looks for offset page diffs.

That's what rsync does yes, but it's not terribly clever about it because there's a lot of back and forth going on. Anyhow I've found this and I'm going to test it.

You might also consider this:

http://www.rsnapshot.org/

I can't provide a review, but I've seen it recommended before.

I'm sorry to make this the AeroFS support thread, mlatin or others, but I'm curious about something. I've set up my Itunes library on two computers to sync via AeroFS. I would have thought that AFS would look at the files on each side and not sync whatever is already the same, but it's been working for two days and might be syncing every single file in Itunes. Stuff was pretty much already in sync via Live Mesh. Do you know if it will do this all the time, or is this likely a one-time occurrence?

Also, I wish I could find the AFS documentation, if there is any. All I've found is a FAQ that doesn't tell you much about what to expect or how it does what it does.

That said, I have two invites if anyone wants them.

i couldn't tell ya why that is happening, really.. i don't have that issue with any of the other folders i'm syncing. i'm not syncing iTunes folders (just set it up for testing; it worked and that was as far as i wanted to go with it), nor am i actually using iTunes (horrible piece of crap that it is, imo). probably what is happening is that iTunes on either computer is making changes to metadata within the files and constantly syncing those files whose metadata changes (metadata being the ID3 tag info, which might contain ratings or playback numbers, etc). i already stated (i think) that there might be issues with having multiple computers accessing the same files at the same time, and this may be part of that as well. iTunes wasn't developed to work in that sort of environment, i don't think.

there really isn't any documentation, per se. their Support Center is probably the closest you are going to get to having any documentation.

BitTorrent Sync looks to be worth keeping an eye on

http://techreport.com/news/24267/build-your-own-cloud-with-bittorrent-sync

I don't see the point of this at all, you can already make your own private cloud if you want to without resorting to bittorrent. And isn't the whole point of cloud storage is being able to access your files at any time at full speed?

I use Wuala to store my documents, it works well enough, they use local encryption too. The only thing I don't like is that it uses Java at its core. At least the interface is much much better than the other main cloud service which uses local encryption, SpiderOak. Their software is really buggy, complicated, and glitches out all the time.

Yeah, that's exactly it. I don't need storage in the cloud, I need to keep identical data sets in the hundreds of gigabytes synchronized bewteen remote systems.

Goddamn Microsoft for killing Mesh. I would give them MONEY for a working standalone for that. Fuckers.

That looks promising.

So, am I dumb or does AeroFS still not support multifolder?

Nope, it's "in development," and the most-requested feature on their site, but yeah. Still no official multifolder support.

You can junction to folders elsewhere as a hack but that isn't what I want to do.

Well fuck. The dumb thing is while you can change the path, you still have to put everything in a folder called aerofs. Dumb.

That's what the junctions are for. It's the same technique that works for skydrive.

Yeah, it's stupid. It's the fault of the people who decided Mesh wasn't worth supporting.

I just got into the SyncApp alpha!

AeroFS is out of beta. They still don't support adding any folder you want to the sync, but with the Teamserver function, they're angling to become the alternative to Dropbox for organizations who need lots of data on multiple systems.

SyncApp is working wonderfully for me, minus a weird hiccup last night where it gave me an out of memory error that didn't go away till I killed the app/process.

BTSync is.. not too bad. it certainly has flaws, but it isn't so lost at this point that they won't likely do something to fix those issues.

i just had the chance to throw this onto a few machines tonight, and of the 3 machines (2 at home, 1 at work), the home machines talked between one another just fine. the work machine is behind some pretty crazy firewall, but still ought to be able to get out to something (other things work- have had no issues with LogMeIn, Dropbox, Box.net, or AeroFS).

something that bugs me about it, though: for each folder you share, you make a 'Shared Secret'. basically, you create your folder share with that Shared Secret, then on any other computer, you also just input that Shared Secret, point it to a folder and go. the downside to this is that there is no authorization/authentication whatsoever- no way to disallow people other than yourself who happen to get ahold of your Shard Secret from connecting to your share.

so: you create a share for some music, give that to a friend. that friend passes it on to 3 other friends, and so on. presumably, if all the other friends are on the share still, it works like BitTorrent does and pulls parts from each person.. but there is still no authorization or way to know who it is that has your Shared Secret- it could be passed on forever.

there are provisions for making read-only Shared Secrets and one-time Shared Secrets (of both R/W and R-O varieties), but nothing to limit the scope of reach, etc.

seems to be pretty decent otherwise, considering it is still fairly early along in development.

Yeah, the lack of a password/key to authenticate the Shared Secret is a little weird. Obviously, if anyone managed to randomly choose one that correlated with an existing share at the very least you'd perhaps notice the addition of a computer to the "Devices" list.

What they should do is use an email address as a passkey for the generation of the Shared Secret, and then notify at that address when any new devices/shares are created.