Use case help and nesting a folder

I Have a Question
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Hello! I am new to Odrive and have signed up for the premium trial. I think Odrive premium will take care of my needs, but I have pretty limited understanding of the technical language and protocols. After reading through the documentation, I still have some questions. Can you help?

1) My use: I would like to have my home laptop and work desktop folders be identical. They would sync through my Amazon Drive. I am working on a textbook with frequent updates to Word files, reference manager (Endnote), and hundreds of individual photo files that are frequently edited, renamed, and moved around between subfolders. These files are the most active on a day-to-day basis. It seems to me that Odrive is a good sync solution.

I would like the active folders I am currently working to be be fully downloaded at both physical sites. My commute is 30 min, allowing time for sync to happen between leaving one work-space and arriving at the new work-space. Do you see any problems with this setup? I should mention that the folders in my work desktop are network folders.

(In this scenario, I’m not really using Odrive to access different cloud services - more for the sync between local files on 2 computers at different physical locations -so I can actively work regularly at both locations.)

2) In testing the Odrive, I have synced a large desktop folder up into the Amazon drive, but I would like to reorganize the nesting structure of my folders in Amazon drive. For example, I would like to change “Amazon Cloud Drive > Book1” to “Amazon Cloud Drive > D > Book1” with “Book1” already a fully synced odrive folder from my desktop, and “D” a new folder I’ve created just to help keep things organized. I have tried to drag and drop “Book1” folder into “D” folder through the odrive webpage interface, and it is not allowed. Is there a way to reorganize synced folders? Or do you have to disconnect, delete cloud folder, and resync with a new destination folder on Amazon Cloud Drive?

3) Finally, I might suggest allowing a 2 week (or even 30 days) premium trial for new users so they have time to work through their potential scenarios. Not sure what your current typical user is, but I’m not a programmer although I am pretty motivated to make this work and have dedicated many hours to reading the documents and forums and FAQs as well as Googling terms I don’t understand. I suggest better FAQ’s in plain language, as I am on day 3 and still working through how this functions. If other users are like me, they will probably be trying to figure out how to uninstall previous sync software (I was using Synology Cloud Station and have previously used Google Drive), how Odrive compares to other sync services (e.g. DropBox), and whether the leap is right for them. I have synced one folder to odrive as a test case, but reaching enough understanding to make a full commitment move to Odrive might take me more than 7 days.

Thanks in advance for any advice or tips.

Edited to add: As an example of the average user that I am, I don’t understand why the format of this post of wrong, and after futzing with the text box for a while, it feels like diminishing returns to try and fix it. It should read 1. 2. and 3. with three paragraphs under “1”. Thanks.

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Hi @dora.lam.himlin,

Thanks for reaching out. Please see my responses below:

  1. odrive will keep things in sync between your desktop and the linked storage on multiple desktops. If you want things to always be downloaded, automatically, in certain folders, then you would want to setup “folder sync rules” on those folders:
    https://docs.odrive.com/docs/sync-source-changes#section-configure-folder-sync-rules

Some things to watch out for:
A. You mentioned ~30 minutes to allow for the reflection of your changes. If you have a lot of “heavy” data (lots of files or large files) it could take longer to sync those within a 30 minute period, especially if your upload speed is on the slower side. You would want to setup a good strategy/process to make sure your changes from one system have been reflected to the other system before you start working on those files again.

B. You also mentioned that your folders on your work desktop are on a network drive. Can you elaborate on that?
Why are they on a networked drive?
Does this mean that multiple people are accessing those same files at work?
That raises a bit of a red flag for me as it can introduce quite a bit of complexity, depending on how things are setup and used.

Additionally, working with existing folder content requires the use of “sync to odrive” folders. It is possible to use “sync to odrive” to sync with externally mounted folders.

Again, it increases the complexity of things, so it is important to understand the nature of the data and of the networked drives in use.

  1. If you wanted to reorganize your data, you would want to use the odrive desktop client to do it. Using the odrive desktop client interface, you can move folders/files around (within the same linked storage) just like you normally would on your desktop.

Have you tried that?

  1. Thanks for the suggestions. We are continually working on improving documentation and available information.
    odrive is very powerful, with lots of options and potential ways to apply its features to your use case, so we know things can get confusing. We are working on ways to make the application more intuitive and easier to navigate.

Additionally, our usage guide actually allows users to suggest edits (top right), if you have any specific suggestions you would like to offer.

Our current trial is 7 days, but we also offer a no-questions-asked, immediate, full refund if you cancel a subscription within 30 days of purchase. This allows you to try these odrive features for an additional 30 days without risk.

1 Like
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Hi Tony,

Thanks so much for the detailed reply. Much appreciated!

  1. Thanks for the suggestion. I will pay close attention to the folder sync rules.
    A. Will do. In a folder view in Windows, the column “date modified” should reflect the last time I saved changes to a file. Is it correct to assume this timestamp will not be affected by the latest sync/download? So, I should be able to track the latest version that has synced by that timestamp? For example, I save all files at work at 4:30pm, and drive home to work on the same file, I would want to see a timestamp of 4:30pm before I start working on those files again.

B. This is on a network drive for various reasons, but the primary reason is that I move between various workstations within the institution, and I can access the files on my network drive even when I’m not at my office. Another reason is drive space - the network drive can handle my currently 600GB whereas my desktop C drive cannot. I’ve also been assured by IT that nothing is ever “lost” on the network drive, even if my computer bites the dust. You mentioned external storage - I’ve considered an external drive for storage, but the network drive allows me access from multiple workstations and different physical locations on campus. So far, it looks like the “sync to odrive” is working for the network drive, although the upload is slow.

Is there anything specific about the network drive that I should be on the lookout for? I can ask our IT dept if it is something outside my scope of knowledge.

I am the only person accessing the files on my network drive. For now, I have no plans to share files with others. In the future, I would be interested in sharing files or folders for editing/proofreading, which I understand can cause file version conflicts. Not so worried about that right now, and my co-authors/editors have been extremely cautious with that in the past. And I would not be sharing files from the network location, but from the cloud drive if that makes a difference?

  1. Perfect- it worked, thanks!
  2. Great to know about the 30 day option. Thanks for continuing to improve the product. I can definitely see its potential and appreciate the support you are providing. It makes all the difference.
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Yes that is correct.

Amazon Drive doesn’t support storing the date natively, so odrive has to do some tricks to store the modified date. This means only odrive can set it and see it. It is possible, though rare, that the storing this special data can fail even though the file is still uploaded. In that case the file will have the upload time as the modified time. In the case of a new edit on an existing file, this is probably not going to be noticed, since the times will be very close.

In short, this is not anything you should worry about, but I just wanted to point out the special behavior.

No. As long as it is a reliable source and your connection to it is stable and fast, things should be okay. It is possible that edits on a networked drive will be picked up more slowly than on a local drive (Windows doesn’t tell odrive about the change the way it does on local drives). This can introduce some delays in uploading the edited files (up to an hour or so), so something to keep in mind.

Okay. Sharing from the cloud would be preferred and should work more reliably/cause less confusion.

Thanks!