Need user selectable time delay for some files that naturally update frequently such as outlook.pst. Causes lots of machine busywork and network traffic with unnecessarily frequent syncing in these cases.
Hi @chaski,
Yes. Our strong recommendation is to not sync actively used files like these, which are essentially application database files.
A sync “gate” that would prevent frequent updates of certain filetypes is an interesting idea, although it presents some significant complexities.
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Being adventurous I thought I’d see what happens in this case, especially since the Outlook 365 files are busy. Surprisingly, it actually works reliably and even dutifully syncs busy Outlook files.
What was unexpected is that odrive insists on syncing the entire Local/Microsoft folder rather than just the Outlook subfolder even though only the latter is what was initially selected for sync. The end result overall is that everything reliably syncs but just at the cost of gratuitous frequent odrive activity.
Now what I’ve done out of curiosity is unsync Outlook 365 on the odrive folder side. Folder activity continues on the local side while a snapshot from yesterday remains in the odrive Outlook folder. I’ll try manually doing sync/unsync periodically on the odrive side to maintain an archive on the Amazon Cloud Drive. Perhaps if that process could be automatic, it would be useful. That’s what could constitute the “delay” I mention.
What I said previously doesn’t seem to be true. While I did choose “unsync” on the odrive side, the Outlook folder eventually did currently still sync. Don’t want to choose “unsync” on the local side since all the files will be removed, which is not acceptable. Looks like the only way in the present odrive design to disconnect Outlook is to simply delete all the files on the odrive side.
I don’t quite understand the setup. odrive won’t sync anything that isn’t within its scope to sync. If you change files within its scope of monitoring/tracking, it will push those changes up. You mention unsyncing on the “odrive side”. What is the other side?
Can you provide some detail on your current setup in relation to odrive and odrive’s synced folders?
Thanks!
I’ve tinkered with this some - but am likely still rather ignorant.
I did see that per the usage description, if I set “unsync” on the local machine, a given set of files in a folder could be stored “in the cloud” to free up local storage. So I wondered if the reverse might happen where if I set “unsync” on the odrive folder, files would stay in local storage and no longer be synced up to the cloud. That doesn’t seem to be the case. I’d like to see if I could maintain a set of files locally (such as active Outlook) and have them also in odrive but not synced (still on the Amazon Cloud Drive). The idea being to periodically sync the file set and not have it be continuous. So basically, what would be the best way to do that?
In order to keep playing with this and best enjoy any updates, I bought a Premium upgrade after a few days of trial. I have two cloud storage setups but am rather new to it all.
No worries @chaski. There are several new concepts to get used to with odrive.
Unsync is purely a way to reduce the locally cached items, but still retain them in the cloud. Placeholders allow you to visualize your files without needing the data to reside on the local machine.
If you want to reduce the frequency of syncs for active files, the only way to effectively do that, currently, is to stop sync and then start it again when you are ready to push your changes up. You can stop sync from the odrive tray menu at the top under “Ready to sync new changes”. This will prevent automatic/background syncing until started again. This will not stop manual downloads or expands of placeholder files, however, so you can still pull data down while this is set.
Yes, but I’m happy to have most items synced immediately without interruption. However, would like to choose just a few items to stop, not the entire set.
OK, I’m working with the global Stop Automatic Sync. I think I’ll do that for the time being and then periodically restart it manually. After all, my Mozy cloud backup only runs a couple of times a day on this computer. However, with that app I can set up the automatic upload interval. Sometimes if I do something particularly important, I will kick an extra Mozy upload right then and there. I will say that odrive reliably does continuous syncing even with busy database files such as in Outlook 365. No complaints there. Also, I do have 180d/12u fast Internet with 1TB cap so continuous syncing is OK and doesn’t bother my other operations. Not entirely necessary though.
Thanks, Jim
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