Changing timezones causes massive file resysnc

While travelling, I’ve found that moving between timezones will cause odrive to identify all currently synced files as changed, thus triggering a massive re-sync.

This is especially bad, since I often rely on metered, expensive, or slow connections while travelling.

Is there any way to avoid this, other than forcing my PC to stay on my home timezone?

(This occurs on windows 10, while setting a new system timezone - either manually, or via the windows “auto timezone” feature)

Hi @odrive4,

Sorry to hear of the trouble, would you like to provide the requested details below?

  1. Storage you are using to syncing your files and observing the re-sync of existing synced files.
  2. Is this behavior consistent through out; all of your linked storage clouds?
  3. Time zones you changed from / to?

I tried to replicate the problem in Windows 10 Enterprise x64 against my Amazon Cloud Drive and Google Drive by making changes to time zone but couldn’t observed the mentioned issue so just wanted to confirm what I am missing during the process.

Thanks,
Asif

Hi Asif,
Thanks for the quick reply!

  1. I’m using google drive.
  2. Haven’t tested this on other services.
  3. This has happened several times, moving between GMT+2, GMT+3 and GMT-8.

I’ve just returned to Dutch time (GMT+1) from Jerusalem time (GMT+2). I left my laptop on Jerusalem time for fear of triggering a re-sync, but after reading your comment, changed back to Dutch time.

Indeed, for about 12 hours everything seemed fine, but this morning - after waking up my laptop and connecting to the office network, a complete re-sync was triggered. Quitting odrive, returning to Jerusalem time and re-starting odrive stopped the re-sync, but my laptop is now still on foreign time…

Regards,

Boaz.

Thanks for providing the requested details, I will run core tests tonight related to changing time zone and get back to you shortly.

Thanks,
Asif

Sorry for the delay, I left my laptop running for whole of night and changed the time zone today multiple times but unfortunately I couldn’t replicate the issue so I would request you to re-generate same resyncing condition in your machine and then send diagnostic report from odrive tray menu.

Please let me know the following details:

  1. Timestamp of diagnostic report
  2. OS username
  3. File name and folder path re-syncing in your odrive folder.

Thanks,
Asif

Hi Asif,
We’ve recentley switch to daylight savings time, and this seems to have triggered another resysnc, I’ve sent a diagnostic report with the following details:

  1. ~08:32
  2. msn@boazarad.com
  3. A large amount of files are resyncing, but note several files with a prefix of “2013…”, these were created years ago and have not been modified since.

Regards,

Boaz.

Hi Asif,
Having just landed in the Netherlands again, the problem continues.
I’ve submitted another diagnostic report:

  1. 22:23
  2. msn@boazarad.com
  3. See below: all these files are unchnaged but now resyncing for some reason.

Regards,

Boaz.

Hi @odrive4,
I’m taking a look at this. Taking one file as an example “prk_450nm_gt.eps” I can see that the OS time is reporting a difference of one hour on the modification time. Generally this time should be in UTC and immune to OS timezone changes. When we query the information on the file, that time should not be changing.

Similarly to Asif, I am unable to reproduce this. Just to be sure can you give me some additional information on the system?

  • OS is Windows 10
  • The D: drive is an internal drive? What type?
  • What filesystem is on drive D? (right-click->properties on the drive and take a screenshot of the window, please)

Hi Tony,
The OS is windows 10.
The D: drive is a USB Drive, but it is used only on this PC and has never been removed.
The filesystem is FAT32.

While this was some time ago, I’ve seen similar behavior when my odrive folder was on the PC’s main internal HDD.

Regards,

Boaz.

Hi @odrive4,
This explains it then. FAT stores its times in local time rather than UTC, like most other filesystems (like NTFS). https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724290.aspx

This means that Windows will report a different time for the files when you change the timezone, unfortunately. The best way to combat this would be to use NTFS, so that timestamps are stored properly, in UTC.

An additional note here. We actually do not officially support moving the main odrive folder to an external drive. See “IMPORTANT NOTE” in our documentation here: https://docs.odrive.com/docs/odrive-usage-guide#section--move-odrive-folder-to-another-volume-

Thanks Tony!
This also explains my previous experiance with an internal drive - it was a 2nd HD in my previous laptop and was formatted to FAT32 as well.

I’ll reformat the drive to NTFS and hope for the best :slight_smile:

Regards,

Boaz.

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Great! Let me know how it goes.