Syncing cloud changes to original location

Hi All,

So I have just started using ODRIVE to sync my Amazon Drive. Let me just describe my scenario before I explain the issue.

I have my own server at home, and am syncing multiple locations on that server to my Amazon Drive, one location includes all my Media, one includes all my Virtual Disks as I am running Hyper-V and the other includes my files (also synced with my google drive via the GD app which I pay for) The uploading of files to Amazon is going fine, and I can see that the files are uploading no problem, If I add a file on my server it uploads, if I edit a file via google drive on another machine and save then it updates on Amazon.
All these locations are on seperate disks on my server, and my C drive is only 500GB.

Now my issue is this:
If i upload a file directly to my Amazon Drive, then this does not download to the original location on my server immediately, and from what I can tell, it only downloads to the “odrive” directory, which is on my C drive currently. I want to be able to add a file to my amazon drive and have it automatically downloaded to the original location on my server. IE.

My google drive folder is locarted at P:\james\Google Drive\ , if I go to Amazon in the web browser and upload to that same location, then I expect to come home and see the file on my server in that folder, but this isnt happening, instead the file appears in C:\users\james\odrive\p\james\Google Drive\

As I said, I am syncing google drive with the original location already so this method means that if I upload to amazon, then google drive knows nothing about that file.

I struggled to explain this so please dont hesitate to ask any questions, but I could use any advice you guys have.

Thanks,

James

Hi @weldrake13,
I don’t think I fully understand the setup. How are you going about syncing these different locations on your server to Amazon Drive? Are you using “sync to odrive” with the odrive desktop client?

Perhaps you can provide some screenshots of an example folder and how it looks through the different clients you are using (odrive, web client, etc). You can also tell me how this folder is acted-upon by the different clients.

Thanks!

@Tony navigated to the location on my server which I wanted to upload and sync with Amazon Drive (see photo) and I selected sync to ODrive. I then selected the folder on Amazon drive I wanted to sync too. In this case the local folder I wanted syncing was P:\james so I created a //p/james directory on my cloud and selected to sync to that directory.

My main issue is that wthin the folder in the screenshot lies my Google Drive folder, this is synced via the google drive client. I am able to update files on my google drive via drive.google.com, or via any of my devices which also sync to google drive and when I do that, the file updates on my server, and also syncs with amazon due to Odrive. The problem is when I attempt to update a file directly via amazon drive. If I browse to my “google drive” folder on amazon cloud and upload a file, or I update an existing file, the change only shows up on my server in the “odrive” folder that is located on my C drive, NOT in my actual google drive folder which I have told Odrive to sync, which is located on my P drive.
The result is this, in this example I uploaded a file called "network assignments"directly to amazon drive:

The file does NOT exist in the original Google Drive location on my server which is the location I actually chose to sync to Odrive.

I hope this makes more sense now, thanks :slight_smile:

I would like to add, since the file did not sync back to the location on the P drive on my server, the file was not picked up by the Google Drive Client, and therefore I now only have the file accessible on my Amazon Drive, not Google Drive as well. Ideally the file would sync back to the original location which I chose to sync, and therefore be picked up on by the Google client and uploaded to google, leaving the file in both locations.

Hi,
How long are you waiting for the file to show up? If you right-click on the “Advanced Networking” folder in P: and select the odrive “refresh” option, does the file show up?

Can you send a diagnostic from the odrive tray menu, please?

Your setup is definitely a more advanced use case and could have some unexpected side effects because you now have two sync engines acting on the same data. This is not something we test for and do not recommend because of the potential for conflicting/simultaneous actions on the files by the two active, independent sync engines. This may not be the reason for your particular issue, but I wanted to point that out. I may be able to learn more with the diagnostic.

If what you are seeing is a delay, and the file does eventually sync, then this could fall within expected Amazon Drive behavior.

@Tony I have sent a diagnostics.

I am unsure how to refresh the original folder as there is no option there when I right click to refresh except for the windows explorer refresh which doesn’t do anything in this case.

The fact that there are two syncing agents acting on the folder is actually irrelevent, I have tried today to upolad to amazon drive a file into a location that is NOT synced with google drive on my server, and the file also failed to download on my server. The only option I see which allows me to download the file is to browse to the “odrive” folder on my filesystem and to find the file there and open it. This is no use as as I have said, it then saves the file to the odrive locatioin which is on my C drive, not to the original location I chose to sync.

What is the expected behaviour when I upload a file to amazon drive into a synced location? should it download into the location i chose to sync on my server or should it just sit in that odrive folder?

Hi @weldrake13,
I took a look at the diagnostic, and it looks like you have a large bulk upload in progress right now across many folders. You can see in your screenshot above that there is the “Stop” option in the context menu. This replaces refresh when there are actively syncing items in the folder tree.

The lack of reflection you are seeing is due to that. Since odrive is in the process of a large-scale upload job on that tree, the reflection of remote changes will be delayed. I would suggest waiting for your upload job to finish, and then test again.

Thanks!

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@Tony i just ran up a virtual machine to see if that was the issue (I suspected it could be the cause) and am now seeing new folders (from both sides) appear in the folder, but when I upload a file to amazon, I only get the CLOUDF file showing up in the virtual machines file system, with the option to download on a right click. Is there a way to just have these downloading automatically? as the auto download feature built in seems to only download the file when I navigate to the folder that it is in?

Thanks.

Hi @weldrake13,

Take a look at this section of the usage guide: https://docs.odrive.com/docs/sync-your-odrive#section--sync-all-files-and-subfolders-

The “Save and apply to new files and folders” option will apply the specified settings to underlying folders. The settings are then inherited in the structure. This will cause newly added folders on the remote side to auto-expand and sync according to your settings on the local side.

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@Tony that looks like exactly what I am after, however, there is no sync-options under a right click of the folder which is syncing in my scenario. In this scenario the folder has completed its initial sync and odrive doesnt appear to be doing any other tasks.

Do you have any idea why this may be?

Hi @weldrake13,
When you click on “Sync” in the context menu with a folder selected, you don’t see the sync window pop-up?

@Tony I am seeing the window you mean when I do this from my server or my mac, but not from within this VM. I will do some looking into this.

@Tony having removed the sync and starting again I am now told that Sync to Odrive is a premium feature. I was under the impression that syncing files to odrive was a free feature?

Hi @weldrake13,
Please take a look at this post for details on the different options for syncing files in odrive: