That’s exactly what happened to me! See above comments if you’ve not already read them.
For me, the projects were fine, hope yours are the same.
For what it’s worth, if anyone is having similar issues with Dropbox (including some ‘invalid files’). The following was suggested to me from Dropbox support and worked (after a couple of swings at it). Here’s what they said:
- Make sure the Dropbox desktop application is running
- Click on the Dropbox icon in your menu bar and then click on the gear in the Notifications panel
- Select ‘Preferences’
- Click on the ‘Account’ tab
- Hold down the ‘Option/Alt’ key.
- Click on the ‘Fix Permissions’ button (make sure you’re still holding down the ‘Option/Alt’ key)
- You may be prompted for your a username and password, this is your computer login credentials, not your Dropbox account ones
Prior to this I had ‘unlinked’ my dropbox and relinked it. Rebooted the comp. I also made sure nothing was currently attempting to sync. The permissions fix was set and then, after a lengthy sync process (at least an hour or two), it was back to functioning normally.
The advice about running away from DB still stands but give that a go if you haven’t already.
How mad is it that a fix permission option is hidden?
For what it’s worth, regards Syncovery that I’m working with at the moment, in the middle of syncing a 35gb cloud storage thingie, it’s really bloody good. To really get to grips with it you need to put it into Advanced mode. Once done, the setup window is way more complex than the wizard approach, but you get so much control. The options are immense, and take a bit of understanding, but once you get your head around them it’s pretty amazing. It’s doing it’s first sync and you can actually see what is happening, not the usual “syncing” explanation things like DB and OD give you.
From what I can tell it is good for all backs of data backups and syncing. Full or partial server backups to local machines is really easy to do.
Reading around the forums it seems to be really well respected by lots of professionals so unless it falls over in the next few days I’ll be dumping the DB & OD apps and using it for those. Plus, a few other backups that are done in a rather hap-hazard way to-date.
The downside is syncing takes place at set intervals, as short a 1min, opposed to it constantly monitoring the cloud folders for changes. The upside is that the resources footprint is tiny compared to the others. And that it costs!
I have been following this discussion with great interest, and I am wondering if there is an inherent risk in syncing rw8 files via cloud services.
I am no expert on the rw8 file format, but a quick look reveals that it is a so called “package”: a folder structure that looks like a single file. A quick check shows that Dropbox (and presumably all other cloud services) syncs the content of the package file as any other folder.
Which means that: if you update a project file and save it on one computer, and disconnects before the sync is complete, you are left with a rw8 project containing a mix of old and new data. In many cases this could go unnoticed and possibly even correct itself when connection is restored. But if you do heavy editing on a large rw8 project on one computer, disconnects before the sync is complete, and continues editing on another computer…
Well, then it is my guess that you could be left with a project that has internal inconsistencies that could haunt you in all sorts of unpleasant ways.
You are correct, as that is my understanding too. It’s always been imperative that any syncing is allowed to complete before shutting down the machine you’ve just been working on. This has really been the case for as long as Dropbox has existed, it’s not a situation unique to RW.
A thought I’ve been having recently:
I’ve no proof, only a bit of guesswork but I think Apples increased security is having an effect here.
- The RW sandwich files contain a lot of stuff of which html/php/js files are plentiful.
- MacOS will scan and certify content stored within ITS OWN file system as safe but …
- Files that originate from outside (OneDrive, DropBox, GoogleDrive etc) may be deemed as a risk as they contain executible code (html/php/js stuff)
The more MacOS locks down the more these type of problems seem to occur.
UPDATE…
Unfortunately, it seems Syncovery isn’t the tool to replace the OneDrive and Dropbox app.
The problem is, unlike the native DB & OD apps, which appear to constantly monitor (indexes?) the folders on your local machine and picks up on any changes more or less immediately, Syncovery seems to go and look at the folders in question at the specified time intervals, compares the creation dates, and updates accordingly.
The problem seems to be it looks at every file. And when your sync folder contains 35gb of files, that takes quite a while!
I have Syncovery set to check and sync the files every five minutes. 40 mins ago I made a change to one of the sync folders and told Syncovery to do a sync. It’s still comparing each and every file, so it’s a long way off finding the one new file. It’s estimating it’s 60% done, so about another 30mins to go. Which means, as a replacement for the native DB & OD apps, it’s not an option. Which is a real shame.
As a tool for backing up folders, be they Dropbox, Onedrive, server or even local folders, it’s a brilliant bit of kit, and I’ll be buying it for that purpose alone, but it’s not the replacement I’d hoped for.
The dev is super helpful, so I’m going to fire him an email and see if I’ve got something wrong, but I think I’ve got it all setup, and it’s just not the tool for that particular job. I’ll update again once I hear back.
I use iCloud and it seems to work fine
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Another update on this one from me…
It’s just over a week since I switched from using Dropbox to Onedrive, and after some initial issues, OD is now working almost as well, in terms of speed, as DB. Something i changed which I do beleive improved things was to set my MBA to download all files, not work in offline mode, or whatever OD calls it. Up to this point OD was really slow on all devices, but once I gave in trying to manage the limited space on my MBA (my only non-desktop machine since the demise of my trusty 17in 2010 MBP) things on all devices has improved.
I did stick with DB for the RW Addons folder, mostly because OD has issues with several Stacks4Stacks stacks, but in the end I’ve just had to drop those stacks and move the addons folder to OD, and thus far, it’s working fine.
In case anyone cares, the issues with S4S stacks is covered here: S$S Spacer & Toggle issue on One Drive
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I’ve switched to iCloud for syncing the RW addons. everything else in n OD.
OD Sync on demand is a nightmare, it might be ok if you spend your life just using MS Word but anything else it was a nightmare.
What you can do to save space on a particular machine is to exclude whole folders from syncing. In OD’s settings >Account there’s a button called ‘Choose Folders’
Windows settings screenshot:
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