Sync is Confused - oDrive vs Original

Troubleshooting
1

i have premium, and i have set a lot of directories and sub-directories of my local “Work” directory to sync to odrive (going to BackBlaze B2, which i have named “oDrive”).

today, i am confused… because in my “odrive” directory, i now have “oDrive (B2) \ B2Bucket \ Work Remote \ 3D” filled with placeholder folders.

when i go to my local “Work \ 3D” view… none of those folder icons have the blue checkmark icon on them. SOME of the subfolders and files have the blue icons on the files inside them. and some don’t. even ones i know i set to sync.

okay, what is going on?

1: why are these things showing up in the odrive directory? they should be synching to their original locations.

2: why do i not have the sync icons on the original files? i know they’re on the cloud, because i can go to the ‘manage storage’ page and see them there.

additionally, i was reading the user guide, which says i can jump to my synched directories from the tray icon by using ‘synch to odrive : open (name) folder.’ when i check that, only a few of my synched directories show up in the list.

what’s going on with this?

2

Hi @BLR,
For #1:
Since the default odrive folder (C:\Users\[My User Name]\odrive) will show all of your linked storage, it will have access to the folders that you are targeting with the “sync to odrive” feature, if you expand them.

For example, if I right-click->“sync to odrive” on my local C:\Users\[My User Name]\Documents folder and choose to map that to a Documents folder in my Google Drive, that synced data will be viewable in two places:

  1. My local Documents folder (C:\Users\[My User Name]\Documents)
  2. Within the default odrive folder under C:\Users\[My User Name]\odrive\Google Drive\Documents

Usually you would want to keep C:\Users\[My User Name]\odrive\Google Drive\Documents unsynced so that it is a placeholder file (C:\Users\[My User Name]\odrive\Google Drive\Documents.cloudf) to avoid having the structure exposed in two locations. The assumption being that you will be working directly out of the local C:\Users\[My User Name]\Documents folder for this data.

For #2:
If you are not seeing icons on the parent folders it could indicate that there are some files within that folder that are unable to sync properly. Do you have anything listed in “not allowed” or “waiting” in the odrive tray menu?

You will also not see checkmarks on placeholder files (.cloud or .cloudf).

If you send a diagnostic from the odrive tray menu and provide a few of the folder paths where you are seeing this, I can take a look and see what might be the issue.

This will only show the folders that you explicitly right-clicked on and used the “sync to odrive” feature (not to be confused with the regular right-click->“sync” feature), like in my example above for the local Documents folder.

3

oh, so it is supposed to do that? okay : )
maybe i’m the one who is confused.

i’m concerned, because this happened right after an incident where we were without internet (we often have power and/or internet outages). and when i started my computer and odrive started, it popped up and said it could not verify my premium status, due to not being able to ‘phone home.’

is it possible that the synched directories lost their synched status due to me ‘not being premium’ for that day?

how/where do i send a diagnostic file? (i do know where to have odrive generate one.)

i have a quick illustration (sans any possible idenifying info) of what is going on:

1: so the odrive backblaze (i named it oDrive, because my backblaze account keys are by program names. oops. : X) has the Work Remote directory, which is the sync of my ‘real’ Work directory. and it has my 3D subdirectories listed in it.

2: the actual Work directory doesn’t show the sync icons in the right pane, either on folders OR on the files, as shown by this look into the ‘Anaconda’ directory.
–also, no, odrive does not show any ‘waiting’ or ‘not allowed’ indications.

3: another directory under Work, A: doesn’t show up under the odrive directory and B: has icons on its sub folders and file icons.

leading me to believe that the 3D synched stuff is indeed somehow broken.
(EDIT) oh wait! i see what’s going on! i synched the 2L directory as the top directory to sync, and all its SUBdirectories have checkmarks on them. but since i did each 3D subdirectory individually… they think THEY are the top, and so DON’T have checkmarks on them! (i really screwed myself, didn’t i? see below.)

my main concern is this: if they DID become desynched (because of internet outage), what would happen if i had ‘unsyched’ these directories (to change them to placeholders only) and they lost their connection?
and, is this going to happen every time i am without internet?
(i presume the fix is easy, just right click and select sych for everything again.) (unless odrive believes these are new iterations of the files already on there, and creates duplicate remote files? that would be bad.)

…

i’m back, i created more trouble :wink:

so i thought… instead of doing piecemeal of some directories under my Work\3D, i would just do them all by syncing the whole 3D directory. however, when i right clicked and hit ‘sync’ it said there was an error; it couldn’t synch work\3D, because there was already an odrive folder in there. !?

so then i thought… okay, i will select ALL under Work\3D and hit synch. which i did. it didn’t do anything : X so… i had to right click each and every subdirectory and sync them one at a time. not fun.

also, i have some files floating around in the 3D directory itself. if i select all those and right click… there isn’t even an option to sync them. wait. i can’t even sync them one at a time?

how do i fix this? do i have to delete everything off backblaze, then start over just synching the top 3D directory? : /

4

Hi @BLR,
No worries about the questions. Let’s see if we can get you sorted out. You definitely don’t need to delete everything.

I don’t think things are in a bad state, but we just need to configure your folders optimally. Once we do that we can see if there are any lingering inconsistencies.

If you can send a diagnostic, I will take a look at the current configuration and then provide the steps to take to get things dialed-in.

How to send a diagnostic:

5

Hi @BLR,
I just wanted to ping you on this and see if you still needed any assistance. Just let me know when you are able to send a diagnostic.

6

thanks, tony!

sorry, i’ve been busy with stuff.

so… how can i tell odrive that my local ‘Work\3D’ directory is the same as the cloud ‘Remote Work\3D’ directory? actually, it might be easier to just have the local ‘Work’ as the base set to be ‘Remote Work.’

i guess i should not have done it one 3D subdirectory at a time, but i was starting out and testing things.

i clicked the thing to send a report… so it’s wherever little reports go when they get sent :slight_smile:

thanks again for giving me a hand!

7

Hi @BLR,
The local and remote directory names need to match, so we can’t map Work to Work Remote directly.

I do see that you have many subdirectories within Work\3D mapped. We can remove these and just map Work\3D to Work Remote\3D.

To do this, you will need to right-click->Remove sync on the following directories:
E:/WORK/3D/Jewelry
E:/WORK/3D/BlenderBenderClass
E:/WORK/3D/ZBrushWork
E:/WORK/3D/ProjectXanadu
E:/WORK/3D/Possum
E:/WORK/3D/Scripting
E:/WORK/3D/Furrikins
E:/WORK/3D/Furniture
E:/WORK/3D/Anaconda
E:/WORK/3D/Arrow-Bows
E:/WORK/3D/Dolphin
E:/WORK/3D/Mouths
E:/WORK/3D/PomPoms
E:/WORK/3D/FreeMeshShapes
E:/WORK/3D/Vernid
E:/WORK/3D/miscProps
E:/WORK/3D/MasterAnimatorsClass
E:/WORK/3D/RedPanda
E:/WORK/3D/Frog
E:/WORK/3D/Cookies
E:/WORK/3D/NorwayLemming
E:/WORK/3D/RHSshopParts
E:/WORK/3D/Heads
E:/WORK/3D/IllDoItMyself
E:/WORK/3D/Hands
E:/WORK/3D/3rd
E:/WORK/3D/PeacockTails
E:/WORK/3D/DigiDeformers
E:/WORK/3D/PolarBear
E:/WORK/3D/Animations
E:/WORK/3D/Feathers
E:/WORK/3D/AvaRigify

Sorry, I know this will be a bit of a pain to do this on all of the directories. Removing sync just removes the relationship. Nothing will be deleted, so you don’t need to worry about losing data.

Once you have removed sync on all of the subdirectories, right-click->sync to odrive on the ‘Work\3D’ directory and select the Work Remote\3D as the remote target.

odrive will go through all of the items and determine what is already synced so that it does not need to re-upload or re-download data.

Just let me know if you have any questions on the above.

8

heyas, tony!

yes, it’s been forever. it’s been crazy here.

removing the synchs and syncing 3D to the Remote\3D was actually fairly simple. i am probably way more paranoid about moving and changing things than is warranted. :slight_smile:

so next bit of paranoia… did all the sub-subdirectories get synched? i don’t see the blue checkmark on the sub-subdirectories (but as i remember, it doesn’t show on those anyway?) but i also don’t see blue checkmarks on any of the files in those directories.

i also just made a quick test text file in a sub-sub-subdirectory, and… it doesn’t appear to have synched (uploaded). the old files are all still there on the remote, of course. they just… i can’t tell if they’re synched any more?

9

Hi @BLR,
If you just performed those steps it could take quite a while for odrive to go through all of the folders. It has to look at each of the local and remote folders and compare the contents, which means it could still be going through things. Once it is done you should see the checkmarks, so if it has been a while and you still don’t see them, we’ll want to investigate that.

Can you send over another diagnostic so I can take a closer look?

10

thank you again!

i had to restart the comptuer, and when it came back up, odrive went right to work and it’s checking all the checks and updating all the updated files (one test).

PERFECT!

this is great, thanks again so much!

11

Great! Thanks for the update @BLR!