Existing, partially synced folder to Amazon Account and sync only the differences

Just discovered that Amazon no longer has an automatic sync function (which is frankly mystifying,) so after a mess o’ trial and error, I believe odrive looks like the most promising solution. Only, having looked around here extensively, but I can’t seem to find an answer to my biggest setup question:

How do I link the massive folder of photos and documents on my drive directly to my Amazon Cloud Drive account in a way that matches the structure exactly and does not necessitate a massive upload to establish new sync criteria?

I’ve got about six folders containing hundreds of GB of photos and docs, all perfectly synced with Amazon. I’d like to sync it to odrive as seamlessly as possible and use the platform to pick up where Amazon is dropping me off.

I realize this is a premium service, but if I can get it to work, it’s a premium I’m glad to pay!

Thanks!

1 Like

Hi @willkeightley,

You’re right, we have a premium feature which may be able to help with your use case.

First a question… When you originally synced your files from your local folder to Amazon Drive, were the file characteristics all preserved (e.g. file name, file size, date modified)? I’m not sure whether or not Amazon’s original automatic sync function preserved modified date, for instance.

If the file characteristics are the same, then you can just select one of the folders --> right-click "Sync to odrive --> when the web page picker comes up, pick the desired folder on your linked Amazon Cloud Drive storage account that you want to set up the sync relationship with. Be sure to double-check, triple-check the destination folder selection since it can cause a bit of time and hassle to clean up if you choose the wrong folder (it IS sync, so we’ll sync both folders as you’ve requested).

If the file characteristics are NOT the same because Amazon’s old sync feature didn’t preserve them properly, then you could still do the above. But we would probably reupload your files as a precaution since they could be different files. This would only happen once, however, and then you would be in sync properly from then on.

Let us know if it works out or if you have further questions.

Thanks,
-Jeff

2 Likes

That seems to work. The trick was to make sure I’m clicking the proper folder to share and ensuring that I match it to the proper folder on the server.

Yes, my cloud file details were all in place, to there did not seem to be a mass upload. I’ll experiment with altering and adding files to see how it responds.

Thanks for the help!

2 Likes

I have a huge folder that was completely uploaded to Amazon Cloud Drive before, using non-odrive software. Then I added lots of files and folders to my Amazon Cloud Drive. Now they still have almost the same folder structures, but there are may discrepancies.

If I link this folder to Amazon Cloud Drive using odrive, and start syncing, will odrive compare and only download the non-existing files from cloud to local drive?

How should I do it? Thanks.

Hi @onyxlee,
Take a look at the above post.

Hi Tony, thank you for your suggestions.

What I am trying to do, is to download all my files from Amazon, and skip those files that are already on my local HDD. I guess this feature “sync to odrive” works the opposite way?

Will it work if I exit/terminate odrive for a few minutes, copy all my existing local files to a folder inside my odrive folder, and replace those *.cloud and *.cloudf files, and then re-enable odrive and choose to sync all, will odrive be smart enough to skip those files and only sync cloud and cloudf files?

Also, I wanted to get premium a long time ago, but it doesn’t do month to month. Unfortunately my trial already expired even before I started seriously considering using odrive.

Hi @onyxlee,
What you suggest should work, but you should go about it in a slightly different way.

Let’s say you have a folder on your computer named myfiles and you want this folder to correspond to a folder inside your main odrive folder odrive\Amazon Drive\myfiles. You should:

  • unsync odrive\Amazon Drive\myfiles so that it is now a placeholder file odrive\Amazon Drive\myfiles.cloudf.
  • Then you would copy the myfiles folder that already exists on your drive into odrive\Amazon Drive. This would be copied alongside myfiles.cloudf.
  • odrive will see the new folder and start scanning it, removing the myfiles.cloudf placeholder file. It will determine which files have already been synced and which files are missing.

It is important to use the same exact folder name in the steps above. I would also recommend trying this on a small, test folder to get a feel for the steps and to observe the behavior.

If your trial expired and you weren’t able to give testdrive odrive enough, you can close your account (https://www.odrive.com/account/profile) and create it again.

Hi Tony, thank you again.

I tried your suggestion and closed my account, reinstalled the latest version of odrive, and then created a new account, tried to log in with the same Amazon credential that was used for the previous account I just closed, and I got this message:

You signed in with different credentials.
The account you signed in with doesn’t match the one you used previously. Please sign in with the same account that you used before.

Now I can NOT even log in and use odive, please help!!!

Hi @onyxlee,
Sorry for missing this earlier.

What operating system is this on? It sounds like the desktop client may not have been uninstalled fully.

Can you try deauthorizing the desktop client from the odrive tray menu under “Authorized User” -> “Deauthorize”. Then try signing in again with the Amazon account.

Thank you. I realized that, after deauthorizing, I had to completely uninstall and reinstall odrive in order to make it work. Once that’s done, it’s all very smooth.

1 Like