Using oDrive with existing local storage/folders

[jeffreyabr]

My main computer houses all of my documents, photos, music, and videos. I have all of this currently backed up on Amazon Cloud Drive.

Until I started using ACD, I was using Copy which had a progressive sync feature, where upon saving a document, my changes were automatically uploaded. Any structural changes made within a folder (eg. a subfolder created with files moved into that folder) resulted in the same movements made on the cloud. I am aware that ACD does not have this functionality.

I contacted Amazon which referred me to this third-party software.

In order to use Copy, I had to create Symbolic Links to the folder I wanted synced (eg. the entire My Documents folder) within the designated Copy folder on my computer. I did not and do not want to relocate my My Documents folder nor any other folders/files that I sync with the cloud into a program’s designated folder.

Is there some way, using ODrive to achieve what I am hoping to do? Will Symbolic Links do the job for me or is there a simpler built-in method?

[Tony]

Hi @jeffreyabr,
Thanks for reaching out.

odrive has a built-in way of doing this called “sync to odrive”. You can read more about that here:

odrive - Unify, sync, share, and encrypt any storage

This is a premium feature and is not available in the free version of odrive. The free version of odrive will sync everything located in the local “odrive” folder, similar to other clients for services you may have tried in the past.

We do not officially support symbolic links because of the risk they can introduce. These types of links can produce bad behavior in terms of performance, user experience, and data integrity under certain conditions. You can reference this post for some additional info on that:

Syncing symlinks/hardlinks/junctions/etc.. - how does it work?

Hi, Good questions. We don’t officially support user-created junctions/symlinks/hardlinks for a number of reasons. The short of it is that the behavior can be unpredictable and users can get into some disastrous situations in certain circumstances, especially with certain types of storage sources. I saw a case during my testing where the entire source folder was destroyed after a remote rename of a symlinked directory. It also complicates sync substantially and can create issues with reflectio…

To quote the post referenced above:
“This all being said, it is your system and you are free to do whatever you feel is best for your own use case and skill level. Technically you may be able to get these types of file system-level links to work, but it is not something we test or support anymore.”

[jeffreyabr]

Thanks for the information. That answered my question. I never personally experienced any issues with Symlinks in my usage, but you guys know your software better than I do.

I guess I’ll wait on Amazon to produce a syncing feature. I don’t think I want to pay additional money to make my primary service work.

[Tony]

I imagine the same risk holds for most sync clients. My own testing showed bad behavior against both Dropbox and OneDrive native clients, for example, when we were exploring the viability of symlinks as part of our own solution. In fact, the “disastrous” behavior I cited in the linked post was actually seen with Dropbox’s client ;).

In any case, there are compelling reasons for us not to endorse this as a solution, but you may have the technical expertise and specific use cases to make something like this a possible option for you.