I have set Auto Download to Always since the first week of using ODrive as I wanted a physical copy of the file to stay on my local drive, to allow my Tape based backup system to copy the actual file.
Well today it appears that this does not work as I needed to restore some files and when I looked at my tape backup, all I have is file placeholder links to files that do not exist any longer. There is about 5+ years worth of data that was backed up that is just dead links. I am trying not to panic about the massive data loss that I cannot seem to recover - Why oh Why is ODrive still making my files into links ???
Hi @russell2,
Auto download in the odrive menu will tell odrive how to handle the current files in the folder when you expand it and new files that are added to an already expanded folder. To make sure new folders are expanded and all of the files inside inside are downloaded, you will want to set the folder sync rules. https://docs.odrive.com/docs/sync-source-changes#section-configure-folder-sync-rules
So, if you wanted everything in a folder to be 100% downloaded and always stay downloaded no matter what new content is added remotely, you would want to do the following:
- Set the "Auto Download Limit in the odrive menu to “Always Download”
- Right-click-> on the folder you want to always be downloaded, slide the slider all the way to the right for ‘Everything’, and check ‘Include subfolders’ and ‘Save and apply to new files and folders’.
- Then click the big silver sync button
On an initial sync, you may have to check on it, because an initial bulk sync operation can be aborted if too many errors are hit while odrive is attempting the bulk download (Amazon Drive is notorious for this). This can keep existing files and folders in a placeholder state. If you have a lot of data, you may want to try using the CLI to perform the initial recursive download, so that it “brute forces” the operation. More info on that here: How can I force a recursive download with the CLI?
In the enclosed picture, you can see a folder in sync, shown with green check marks.
I created a new folder on Google Drive called test and then put a file in it. On the local drive, a .cloudf file has been created and the file has not been downloaded, but odrive is set to Always Download, so the placeholder has been downloaded but not the files.
I again select the root folder and select sync, download everything and sync everything, with the including subfolders checked and the files come down.
So each time I create a new folder, I have to open the local root folder and “Right-click-> on the folder you want to always be downloaded, slide the slider all the way to the right for ‘Everything’, and check ‘Include subfolders’ and ‘Save and apply to new files and folders’.”
Am I missing something as when I set up the original sync, I told odrive to sync everything, including subfolders but I had to do it again to force the downloading of the files?
Hi @russell2,
If you had previous set folder sync rules on the “New Accreditation Pack” folder so that it should always expand and download, then that new “TEST” folder should auto-expand and download the contents inside. This would involve steps 2 and 3 listed in my above post to have been performed on the “New Accreditation Pack” (or a folder above it) before the TEST folder was added.
The ‘Save and apply to new files and folders’ is the key for this, as that sets a rule on the folder for future actions when new content is seen remotely by odrive.
Also keep in mind that these rules can be reset or changed if you set a different configuration on the folder or a folder above it after you have set your initial configuration.