With BitTorrent Sync there is no intermediate “server” rather, it’s based on a direct “peer-to-peer” technology. At that point, my wife’s computer fetches the changed file directly from my computer, via Dropbox’s LAN sync. The Dropbox servers then communicate those changes to my wife’s computer. With Dropbox, if I edit a 30MB file on my MacBook Air, it first has to upload the changes to the Dropbox servers-which over our pathetic Spanish ADSL line might require two minutes. Since my wife, kids and I are usually on the same LAN, BitTorrent Sync allows us to synchronize our files much, much faster than Dropbox, even though both technologies support “LAN sync”. It’s almost like magic! Synchronization speed Now here’s what’s great-If I need an installer locally, I just double-click it, and it downloads in place! And when I’m finished with installer, I simply delete it in the Finder, and shortly thereafter I’ll see its “.bts” alias re-appear. You can see that on my MacBook Air, this folder contains a bunch of “.bts” files-which are tiny “aliases” to the original files stored elsewhere. Within that excluded BTVault folder, here’s a screenshot of my Adobe CS installers, as seen from my MacBook Air. Using this feature, I store my archived files (like software installers) in my “BTVault” folder, on an internet-hosted Mac (that I’ll discuss later in the “cloud copy” section). The problem, however, is that once you’ve excluded a folder via selective sync, it becomes invisible to the local host, making it difficult to get at that data when you ultimate need to.īitTorrent Sync also supports selective sync, but dramatically improves on the Dropbox implementation by allowing you to continue to see the contents of excluded folders locally, and-here’s the killer feature-also allowing you to access that data on demand! The Dropbox solution is to exclude that folder by disabling it in the “selective sync” settings. Say you have a folder of software installers in Dropbox that you don’t want consuming space on your MacBook Air’s SSD. But I like BitTorrent Sync so much that I’m happy to have paid, in support of its success and future development!) Better selective sync (I paid for the Pro version, and in the process of writing this article realized I could still be using the product for free. And if you can get by syncing up to 10 folders, it’s free! Sharing data with my kids, however, would have required purchasing paid Dropbox accounts for them, as our shared “Family” data exceeds the Dropbox free account level.įor $40 per year, a single BTS license can be used on multiple computers. To share data with my wife, without having to purchase a second subscription, required installing Dropbox on her Mac, but logged into my Dropbox account. Economicsĭropbox costs me about $120 per year. This feature is discussed later in the article. That’s because they are selectively “excluded” from my MacBook Air, to save SSD space. Speaking of BTVault and BTMedia, you’ll notice their icons look different. (The free version is limited to ten folders.) Here’s what my setup looks like.Īs you can see from the screenshot, I maintain six synchronized folders-three shared with my wife (BTConfidential, BTCabinet and BTDownloads), one shared with my kids (BTFamily) and two (BTVault and BTMedia) stored elsewhere. In my case, however, I wanted to synchronize data across multiple folders-some shared with my wife and others shared with our kids.īitTorrent Sync Pro ($40 per year) allows the synchronization of any number of folders. This article explains why.ĭropbox provides synchronization of a single folder-your “Dropbox” folder. A few months ago, however, I migrated to BitTorrent Sync (BTS), and haven’t looked back. For many years, I stored the majority of my data in Dropbox.
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