Chronosync and Dropbox

[dropq]

New user of Dropbox here. Apologies if this is a stupid question, but is anyone using Chronosync to sync the content of folders in Dropbox with their counterpart folders on external hard drives?

Is this possible with Dropbox?

Thanks in advance

[rfiorentino]

I'm surprised no one answered this for you. The short answer is yes, but the longer answer is it's a little complicated, because ChronoSync doesn't understand that dropbox can have online and off-line files. In order for everything to work correctly, anything that sinks from dropbox to somewhere else via ChronoSync needs to be always off-line. If it isn't, ChronoSync will sync only the fake dropbox placeholders for the files, and not grab the actual contents of the files/folders. This ultimately means that if files are replaced on your external hard drive by versions in dropbox during the sink process, those files will be corrupted on the hard drive, because they are looking for their online counterparts in dropbox which don't exist on your hard drive.
This would be solved very easily if ChronoSync natively supported dropbox and it's API, like it currently does for Google cloud storage or iCloud, but they haven't implemented that as of yet. You're welcome to email them a feature request/suggestion for this though, as I think it would be immensely beneficial to a massive amount of people, and fairly easy for them to set up structurally given they already have that in place for other cloud services.

ChronoSync and dropbox are currently my main backup/sync solutions, so if you need any further assistance/have more questions please feel free to reach out to me or comment here.

[dropq]

Thanks so much for this very detailed and helpful response!
I will look into setting it up as you describe.

Thanks again!

[Alex]

Thanks @rfiorentino for that detailed response. 

@dropq Let me know if that worked for you. 

[asherdanielfrank]

Hi,

I'm trying to set up my backup/storage system and am really just stuck trying to figure it all out.

I use pro tools and logic, and my goal is to have a redundant system between by Mac mini (which is always connected to an external hard drive), my Mac Pro, additional back up hard drives and dropbox. My idea is that I want to be able to work on my Mac mini, and have it immediately sync so that if I open the project on my laptop, the changes are automatically there. Obviously the easiest way to do this is to just work within a dropbox folder, but the issue is complicated by the external hard drive where I store most of my projects (instead of directly on the mac's hard drive). 

Ideally I want to be able to access the external drive also from my laptop via Dropbox and have changes made there also be made on the drive, but I do not see how to sync the external drive with dropbox except to set it up as a backup. When the drive is a backup and I try to open a file from another computer, dropbox has conflict errors. 

Further, I want all of my projects three times backed up, but in a way that if I make a change to something, it syncs to the backups as well. This was my intention in chronosync, but in trying to involve dropbox to have access between my devices and to share with collaborators, I fear I am in a labyrinth of storage and syncing. I'd really appreciate some help! Could you share more specifically how your system works? Is there a better option than dropbox? 

My goal is to be able to access any project, anywhere and to have changes made synced across devices and hard drives.

[rfiorentino]

Hi. Another lengthy post ahead, apologies.

Here's how I currently have my system set up, maybe that will help give you some ideas. I'll dive into your specific setup in a second My system is:
All projects are on an external hard drive, which is my main working drive that I take with me to sessions, work from home on, etc. I have everything under one working folder, called Sessions, for easier sync setup in ChronoSync etc but you could do this in multiple parent folders if you wanted.
That hard drive project folder gets backed up in the following ways, all via ChronoSync:
Mirrored copy in Dropbox: syncs daily at 2 AM, or anytime my Mac Pro is idle for more than 15 minutes. (In your case this would likely be your Mac mini)
Backup copy on backup external hard drive: once a week at 2AM

When that main hard drive gets full, or I need to archive something etc, I've created an archive folder in my dropbox, and I simply move old projects etc into that folder, from within dropbox, then delete them from the hard drive. Just make sure you've moved the folders in Dropbox FIRST before syncing with ChronoSync, as depending on your sync configuration, you'll either permanently delete those folders, or recopy them unnecessarily back to Dropbox.
The reason I do the archiving this way is so that Dropbox doesn't need to re-upload anything, it just relocates it all, as most of the things I'm moving are at least 30 GB or sometimes 150GB or more.

As you can see above, I primarily work off of the hard drive, move it around with me, and allow most if not all changes to be made on the local external hard drive before being replicated on the cloud/dropbox and other backup drives. DO NOT use dropbox backup for this; you lose almost all control, and you're relying solely on dropbox's ability to sync/deal with conflicts, which as you noted, doesn't work very well, especially in audio production. The caveat to using Dropbox as any kind of active working directory, as noted above, is that dropbox wants to store everything locally, on your internal hard drive, and if you choose to force it elsewhere, you risk data corruption/loss because dropbox infuriatingly assumes that because it can't see the volume it's supposed to be on, that you must have had a change of heart and erased all of your dropbox content completely. (Someone please fix this in the Dropbox engineering team! It Is absolutely ridiculous that in the current technology world we're in, that you don't ask where the volume/folder is before deleting terabytes of data.)
I've gotten around this by literally installing a secondary internal PCIE hard drive in my machine, solely for dropbox storage. This allows me to use ChronoSync bidirectionally with dropbox, though it stores on the added drive, to sync between dropbox and my external hard drive. If you don't do this, and try to use dropbox files in online-only mode with ChronoSync, you'll get very undesirable results, see post above. Again, if ChronoSync would natively support Dropbox using their API or some kind of integration, most of these issues would be fixed/non-existent. Feel free to email them and request this, as the more people that do, the faster it will happen and the higher of a priority they'll view it as.

I hope all of this makes sense, please feel free to write back here or reach out privately via email etc if you need further clarification or want help in setting up ChronoSync/dropbox etc for the workflow you're comfortable with.

[asherdanielfrank]

Thank you so much for your detailed and thorough response. It really helps!!

There are still some issues that I see with making this system work the way that I want for my personal setup.

I suppose my main question is what's really the point of dropbox if I can't trust it to sync properly and backup between my computers and external drives?

I had seen Fab Dupont on Puremix explain his system for dropbox (where he and his team essentially work entirely off of it) but what he didn't explain (and what I'm certain exists) is how all of their projects are stored to external backups as well.

I can see myself employing a system like yours and working off of an external drive which syncs to dropbox whenever it's plugged in to the Mac mini, but I'm not sure how to implement this fully since I only have 500gb internally on that computer. It is always connected to a 1tb data m.2. But will dropbox allow me to store files here? As you said, Dropbox wants to store everything locally. That external drive is plugged in 99% of the time, but it still risks being unplugged I suppose.

Is there a way I could configure my Macmini as like a home base computer with the 1tb m.2 as the local storage, but access the files stored on that m.2 through my MacBook Pro through dropbox? Or even that I could use an external drive between my computers, but chronosync would sync from my MacBook Pro to the dropbox folder which would then be stored locally on the Mac mini's m.2?

It is quite frustrating that Dropbox is configured this way, and I will certainly be writing them an email asking for integration with chronosync,  but maybe there's just a better option overall for me? Maybe I should forgo the cloud storage until it's sorted out better and just use external drives with chronosync and back those up to something like backlaze?

What are your thoughts and recommendations?

Again thank you so much for your time and knowledge. This has been driving me truly and utterly nuts, so it's really nice to get some input from someone with experience.

[rfiorentino]

I really wish there was a way to post an audio recording here lol because it's way too much to type, and it would be much easier to talk on the phone or through audio etc. than going back-and-forth, there's just too much information to be exchanged. If you want to email me I'm happy to give you my phone number if that's easier, I just don't want to post it publicly here. Short answer though, theoretically dropbox will work as you described, sinking changes across devices etc. If, and only if, every instance of dropbox on every machine you're using it on has a local copy of all of the content that you're working on, which for most people, is not practical. If dropbox/smart sync worked the way it theoretically should, and acted as a Netwerk Drive instead of using placeholders that need to be downloaded in the background, this problem virtually wouldn't exist. (Google Drive desktop does this very well, but it has other issues going for it which is why I've stuck with Dropbox for the moment.) But since that's not the case, if you don't have that kind of storage then your next best bet is to use ChronoSync bidirectionally with dropbox and external hard drives. However, for that to work correctly, the main ChronoSync location needs to also have a local copy of whatever dropbox content you're syncing back-and-forth with ChronoSync. Otherwise, ChronoSync will do its job all too well, and replace your actual files with the dropbox placeholders of them, causing them to seem corrupted by any OS that tries to interact with them.
You need to email ChronoSync about integrating their software with Dropbox API, not other way around. Dropbox itself has no interest in integrating something Like ChronoSync, because they're essentially competitors when it comes to the sinking process. but ChronoSync could have a much wider user base by allowing Itself to sync back-and-forth natively with dropbox cloud storage

[asherdanielfrank]

I'd be more than happy to email you and speak on the phone. That would be enormously helpful. And I always love to connect with musicians and pros in the industry!

I don't see your email here, but mine is [Removed as per Community Guidelines]

If you can shoot me an email we can exchange numbers and find a time to chat

[rfiorentino]

Perfect, just emailed you. I'll also see if I can add my email to my profile here somehow for future reference.